How Mark Zuckerberg’s millions and the Center for Technology and Civic Life turned Wisconsin blue in 2020.

By William DOYLE

Democrats seem to know that they cannot win a national election without employing the same tactics that they used to win in 2020. As Nsé Ufot, CEO of the Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project, said “If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re f—ed.”

What happened in 2020 involved a highly coordinated and privately funded “shadow campaign” for Joe Biden that took place within the formal structure of the election system itself. Through the injection of over $419 million of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s money, laundered through the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), the professional left presided over a targeted, historically unprecedented takeover of government election offices by nominally nonpartisan, but demonstrably ideological, nonprofit organizations and activists in key areas of swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Our research shows that CTCL spending in Wisconsin generated enough votes for Joe Biden to secure him an Electoral College win there in 2020. We estimate that CTCL spending in Wisconsin purchased Joe Biden an additional 65,222votes,without which Donald Trump would have won the state by 44,540 votes.

Although CTCL and CEIR are chartered as non-partisan 501(c)(3) corporations, our research shows that the $419.5 million of CTCL and CEIR spending that took place in 2020 was highly partisan in its distribution, and highly partisan in its effects. Targeted CTCL and CEIR spending played a decisive role in building a “shadow” election system with a built-in structural bias that systematically favored Democratic votes over Republican votes.

Big CTCL and CEIR money had nothing to do with traditional campaign finance, media buys, lobbying, or other costs that are related to increasingly expensive modern elections. Rather, it had to do with financing the infiltration of election offices at the city and county level by Democrat activists and using those offices as a platform to implement preferred administrative practices, voting methods, ballot harvesting efforts, and data sharing agreements, as well as to launch intensive multi-media outreach campaigns and surgically targeted, concierge-level get-out-the-vote efforts in areas heavy with Democratic voters.

The injection of bias into select local election offices through CTCL infiltration introduced structural bias into Wisconsin’s entire 2020 election. This involved favoring certain voters and voting practices over others, and disfavoring other classes of voters and voting practices, giving CTCL’s preferred voters and voting methods an outsized impact on the final election results. The outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin is not the outcome that would have occurred if the election had been conducted on the basis of established election laws, equal treatment of voters, and administrative neutrality.

CTCL In Wisconsin: Ground Zero For CTCL’s Nationwide Effort

CTCL’s Safe Elections Project in Wisconsin was not the result of a grass roots clamor for greater election funding among money-starved municipalities desperately seeking additional election funding. It was entirely a top-down endeavor, initiated by CTCL operatives, and funded by a massive inflow of money from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who cultivated connections among “Wisconsin Five” mayors and other city officials, incentivized the first grant applications, and provided funds and advice to aid in their completion.

CTCL involvement in Wisconsin’s election began in Racine. In late May, CTCL issued a $100,000 grant to the southeast Wisconsin city to “recruit other Wisconsin cities to join the ‘Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan.’” Racine Mayor Cory Mason spoke to his fellow liberal mayors in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Kenosha about accepting CTCL’s grants—with the proviso that there would be strings attached.
CTCL authorized the City of Racine to distribute from its initial $100,000 grant, $10,000 to each of the four recruited cities (keeping $10,000 for itself), as an incentive for them to participate with Racine in applying for the larger CTCL conditional grants.

Emails obtained through public records requests show Mason’s office in May 2020 setting up numerous virtual meetings with the four other mayors three months before CTCL publicly announced the first round of grants to the “Wisconsin 5” on July 7, 2020. The Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan, and CTCL involvement in Wisconsin’s election was the culmination of a collaborative effort between CTCL’s activist directors and election officials in Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine. These cities would soon come to be referred to in CTCL inner circles as “The Wisconsin 5.”

At least 10 other cities in areas that were important to Democratic efforts to retake Wisconsin would eventually seek to become part of the plan by applying for and accepting significant CTCL grants considerably in excess of the minimum $5,000 offered to non-urban election offices throughout the state.

CTCL And “The Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan” to Infiltrate Wisconsin’s Election System

The Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan—which would emerge out of a collaboration between high level CTCL Advisors, several representatives of the Pierre Omidyar funded National Vote at Home Institute, and Milwaukee’s City Clerk office during Summer, 2020—was the lynchpin of CTCL’s involvement in Wisconsin’s 2020 election. Fulfilling its major objectives was a condition for CTCL funding. City officials among The Wisconsin 5 signed off on “clawback provisions” that allowed CTCL to reclaim their grant money if it was not used to further the objectives contained in the plan.

For example, the CTCL contract that Green Bay approved warns that the grant was to be used “only for” safe and secure election administration, “and for no other purposes,” which means under the ambitious terms they set forth in their portion of the WSVP. The grant’s clawback provision stated that “CTCL may discontinue, modify, withhold part of, or ask for the return of all or part of the grant funds if it determines, in its sole judgment, that (a) any of the above conditions have not been met or (b) it must do so to comply with applicable laws or regulations.”

How The Wisconsin 5 Sought to Implement CTCL’s Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan: Bonfire of the Inanities

The Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan lists CTCL’s four major strategic objectives.

• First, to “encourage and Increase Absentee Voting (By Mail and Early, In-Person),” mainly through providing “assistance” in absentee ballot completion and submission, and the installation of ballot drop boxes
• Second, to “dramatically expand strategic voter education & outreach efforts, particularly to historically disenfranchised residents.”
• Third, to recruit new election workers, mainly from among paid young activists who would replace the usual, older election day volunteers.
• A distant fourth, both in emphasis and level of funding, was the funding of Covid-19 related safety measures.

CTCL funded election offices in Wisconsin seemed particularly intent on courting a demographic favored by the activists at CTCL—a loosely defined “New American Majority” coalition—to replace the working-class voters who had abandoned the party in droves in 2016, and who formerly made up a significant part of the old Democratic “Blue Wall” in the industrial upper Midwest.

This coalition encompasses people of color, single women, young people, and is often extended to include members of the LGBTQ community. Two of the non-profits most closely affiliated with CTCL, the Voter Participation Center and the Center for Voter Information, are at the forefront of proponents of this electoral strategy. According to Democracy Docket, “In the 2020 election, VPC and CVI overcame unprecedented challenges to help engage voters from the New American Majority.”

Addressing these challenges would involve a large commitment of financial and human resources in Wisconsin. There was therefore considerable anguish expressed in the Wisconsin Safe Voting plan about the “hand holding” level of assistance that such voters required in order to cast valid votes, even under greatly relaxed absentee ballot standards during Covid-19 afflicted 2020. To meet this need, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine together budgeted over $540 thousand of their CTCL grant money toward various forms of “non-partisan voter education” alone.

The Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan outlined the prodigious efforts that the Wisconsin Five were willing to make in order to bend the election system from within toward these untapped tranches of low-propensity potential Democratic voters, and thereby increase Democratic votes in their cities, and in the statewide totals. Established by officials of the Wisconsin Five in collaboration with CTCL advisors, it would serve as the general template for CTCL’s efforts in other key swing states nationwide. It is an extravagant wish list of far-left Democratic election concerns and priorities.
Some of the highlights:

• Concern was expressed about “voters who, understandably, were completely confused about the timeline and rules for voting in the midst of a pandemic and required considerable public outreach and individual hand-holding to ensure their right to vote.”
• Concerns were also expressed that many targeted Democratic voters would have no idea how to cast absentee ballots. WSVP participants lamented the fact that “countless voters” in their municipalities attempted to submit cell phone “selfies” as valid photo ID. Explaining to them that this was not a valid form of photo ID and instructing them on how to properly submit valid ID “took considerable staff time and resources.”
• Green Bay planned to spend $45,000 to employ bilingual “Voter Navigators” to help residents properly upload valid photo ID, complete their ballots, comply with certification requirements, and offer witness signatures.
• Racine wished to create a small corps of “Voter Ambassadors.” Racine officials said they would use their grants to recruit, train and employ paid Voter Ambassadors who would set up at the City’s community centers to assist voters with all aspects of absentee ballot requests, including photo ID compliance.
• Green Bay allocated funds to install secure drop boxes at the city’s libraries, police community buildings, and potentially several other sites including major grocery stores, gas stations, University of Wisconsin Green Bay, and Northern Wisconsin Technical College, in addition to the one already in use at their City Hall.
• In Madison city officials planned to install one secure drop box for every 15,000 voters, or 12 drop boxes total. Madison also planned to provide a potential absentee ballot witness at each drop box, utilizing social distancing and equipped with PPE.
• City officials from all of The Wisconsin Five sought additional funds “to accommodate those who [either do not] want to vote by mail, or go to the polls on election day or to early vote.” Funds were therefore sought to enable absentee “curbside” and “drive-thru voting,” particularly for those with health concerns who could “remain in their cars and have a virtually contact-less voting process.” Each of the five cities asked for significant resources to expand drive-through “curbside” voting for four weeks prior to election day.
• Madison officials sought $160,000 to provide 18 in-person absentee voting locations for the four weeks leading up to the November election. Madison officials also proposed the use of carts for their ExpressVote ballot marking devices for curbside voting so that the use of ExpressVote could be “normalized” to help voters with disabilities feel “less segregated” during the voting process.
• Green Bay sought to motivate potential voters through a CTCL-funded multi-prong strategy utilizing “every door direct mail,” targeted mail, geo-fencing, billboards, radio, television, and streaming-service PSAs, digital advertising, and automated calls and texts. The City guaranteed that these efforts would be undertaken in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali. Additional grant funds to fund voter outreach from within Green Bay’s election office would be “distributed in partnership with key community organizations including churches, educational institutions, and organizations serving African immigrants, LatinX residents, and African Americans.” The total amount that Green Bay sought for this initiative alone was $215,000, or about 64 percent of their entire pre-CTCL election budget.
• Milwaukee wanted to develop a broad-based voter outreach strategy that would appeal “to a variety of communities within Milwaukee, including historically underrepresented communities such as LatinX and African Americans, and would include a specific focus on the re-enfranchisement of voters who are no longer on probation or parole for a felony. Additionally, this campaign would include an edgy but nonpartisan and tasteful communications campaign to harness the current [Black Lives Matter] protests’ emphasis on inequity and ties that message to voting.”
• Racine expressed the desire to obtain funds to purchase “a Mobile Voting Precinct so the City can travel around the City to community centers and strategically chosen partner locations and enable people to vote in this accessible (ADA-compliant), secure, and completely portable polling booth on wheels, an investment that the City [would] be able to use for years to come.”
• Madison planned to launch “a robust and strategic poll worker recruitment effort, focusing on people of color, high school students, and college students” to replace older, experienced poll workers.
• Milwaukee promoted a similar plan to increase staffing by launching a recruitment campaign aimed at “a new generation of election workers to sign up and be involved in their democracy.”

Absentee Ballot Chaos Heavily Favors Joe Biden in 2020

CTCL won Wisconsin for Joe Biden, and they did it mainly with absentee ballots. Covid-19 was used as a pretext in many states to put a moratorium on election integrity laws, guidelines and ballot verification procedures that have been long standing and time tested. The result was chaos, especially in states that suddenly moved from very limited absentee voting toward near universal mail-in voting in a very short period of time, such as Wisconsin.

CTCL’s major objective, as set forth in all their internal documents and grant applications, was to promote absentee voting. This involved getting absentee ballots into the hands of reliably Democratic demographics, showing them how to complete them correctly, convincing them to submit them, and providing as many avenues as possible for those ballots to be returned and counted.

CTCL’s involvement in the 2020 election appears exceedingly complex on the surface, at times requiring a program to keep track of the major players, scandals, and institutional relationships that grew out of the CTCL Safe Elections Project. This aspect of CTCL involvement in Wisconsin has been extensively documented by Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist and M.D. Kittle of the Wisconsin Spotlight, among others.

But all of the resources devoted toward ballot curing, drop boxes, vote navigators, partisan activists infiltrating local election offices, and other voter outreach efforts funded by CTCL were aimed at one ultimate end: Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.
While Democrats knew that the radical move toward near universal absentee balloting in Wisconsin and the chaos that would ensue would probably work in their favor, they could not be sure. This is where CTCL performed an invaluable function that could not have been performed from outside the election system, and why infiltration and the injection of large amounts of funding into local election offices was of such importance.

As Hayden Ludwig of the Capital Research Center, an expert on mail-in voting, told us:

The surge of mail-in ballots due to Covid-19 was one of the 2020 election’s greatest novelties and the key to how the election was manipulated in favor of Joe Biden.

Democratic leadership came together behind vote-by-mail in early 2020 as their best shot at overcoming voters’ Covid fears and defeating Trump, in large part because of pressure from election activist groups, such as the National Vote At Home Institute.

The resulting tsunami of mail-in ballots created unprecedented security and chain-of-custody problems in states where vote-by-mail has never been tried on this scale. It strained the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to deliver mail-in ballots both to voters and vote-counters on-time.

It also stressed the budgets of local elections offices, requiring additional personnel and ballot-counting machines even as Covid-19 restricted working conditions. Without a surefire way to get these mail-in ballots first into voters’ hands, and second into ballot-counters’ hands, the Left could not have been confident the outcome would have significantly helped Biden. This is where CTCL proved essential.

A large part of CTCL’s grants paid for private ballot collection bins outside of USPS’s jurisdiction and with questionable oversight. CTCL also funded additional poll workers and vote-by-mail equipment to count incoming ballots, favoring large, Democratic-leaning cities in battleground states.

How CTCL’s Promotion of Mail-In Voting Favored Democrats in Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, absentee ballots can be submitted by mail or “in person.” The majority of absentee ballots in Wisconsin were submitted via mail or deposited in private drop boxes whose contents were then harvested and delivered to the City Clerk. The Wisconsin 5 ended up having the highest rates of mail in voting in the state. All were well above the statewide average of 59.8 percent, with the highest being Dane County (Madison) at 74.4 percent and Milwaukee County at 70.6 percent. This was a major contributor toward increases in Democratic votes among Wisconsin’s CTCL funded counties.

By September 2020, the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) had already approved a proposal to fund the mailing of all registered voters absentee ballot request forms, and then assisted further increases in mail-in voting by refusing to intervene in a campaign to convince voters to prevaricate about their absentee ballot status to avoid ID and signature matching requirements.

This campaign veers toward actual election fraud. Clerks in liberal bastions Dane and Milwaukee counties in March 2020 advised voters that anyone could use the threat of Covid-19 as a reason for claiming “indefinitely confined” status for absentee voting, which excuses them from voter ID requirements. This message reached hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin voters, and spread beyond Dane and Milwaukee counties. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that, while this advice may have been ill advised, it was ultimately up to each voter to determine their status. Ultimately, about 215,000 voters claimed this status, four times more voters than had claimed to be “indefinitely confined” in 2016.

Absentee voting by mail has a well-known partisan bias that favors Democrats. According to the Election Lab at MIT, the partisan differences in voting by mail increased substantially in 2020. The number of Democrats voting by mail increased by more than 200 percent, while the number of Republicans utilizing vote by mail increased by only 50 percent compared to 2016. In total, they estimate that nearly 60 percent Democrats cast their ballots by mail in 2020, compared to just 30 percent for Republicans. Mail-in ballots are therefore twice as likely to be cast by Democratic voters as Republican voters.

This is well known, and is one of the reasons that Democrats advocate so strongly for universal mail-in voting, but it is far more than a matter of tailoring voting practices to their voters’ preferences. What they fear is that a significant portion of their coalition will not vote at all without mail-in ballots.

Table 1 shows the breakdown of absentee voting among the Wisconsin 5 counties and the other five counties that received significant CTCL grant money.

• Prior to 2020, the rate of absentee voting in Wisconsin was 4.6 percent on average in 2016, and 5.5 percent in 2018. Wisconsin had no experience with widespread absentee voting in 2020 when the statewide absentee voting rate suddenly soared to 58.9 percent.
• The vast majority of votes in the top 10 CTCL counties were absentee votes in 2020. Among the Wisconsin 5 counties, 70.6 percent of all ballots were absentee ballots.
• For the top 10 CTCL counties, the average rate of absentee voting was 67.5 percent, considerably above the state average of 59.8 percent.
• There is strong correlation between high absentee voting rates and counties that generated the most excess votes for Joe Biden compared to 2016, which is the hallmark of a successful get-out-the-vote effort.
• Biden’s vote margin in Milwaukee and Dane counties, which each had absentee voting rates above 70 percent, was a staggering 267,652 votes, over 25 times his statewide margin of victory.
• Four out of the five counties that experienced the largest Democratic shift in 2020 were the four counties with the highest absentee voting rates.

Financing Wisconsin’s Shadow Election System: The Myth of Underfunded Local Election Offices

While we cannot attest to the particular strains on election budgets caused by Covid-19, we do know that by July 2020 the federal government had already distributed over $470 million in CARES Act election grants. The state of Wisconsin received $7,362,345 from the Federal Government and provided state matching funds of $1,472,469 for a total of $8,834,814 to deal with Covid related election expenses.Due to Wisconsin election law, CTCL grants were actually made to cities and not to counties, as in many other states. CTCL marketed its Safe Election Project as an attempt to address the needs of underfunded local election offices in the face of Covid-19 related election challenges. CTCL characterized the problem as “A chronic pattern of systemic underfunding of elections – made more acute by a pandemic.”

To give some idea of the scale of CTCL funding of Wisconsin’s election, this is almost exactly equal to the $8.8 million that CTCL ultimately provided to the Wisconsin Five alone, even though those cities contain less than 20 percent of the state’s population. If they were “underfunded” before CTCL appeared, they were certainly not underfunded afterward by any statewide standard.

But an examination of the election budgets published by the state’s most populous cities shows that The Wisconsin 5 already had some of the most generous election funding in the state. After accounting for CTCL grants, an obvious two tier election system – at least in financial terms – emerges in Wisconsin between the Wisconsin 5 plus 1 (the additional city being Janesville in Rock County) and the rest of Wisconsin cities.

• Average per capita election budgets among the six largest CTCL grant recipients was $5.61. Among the next 5 largest Wisconsin cities it was $2.64 per capita. CTCL singled out for its largest grants some of the most well funded election offices in the state.
• After accounting for CTCL grants, average per capita funds available for election spending rose to $15.48 among the Wisconsin 5 while among the next 5 most populous Wisconsin cities, after accounting for their much smaller CTCL grants, average per capita election funding was only about $3.63.
• Not only was CTCL funding not based on any objective criteria of “underfunding” at the state level, but CTCL grants greatly exacerbated existing election funding disparities significantly, even between high grant CTCL cities, and low grant or no grant CTCL cities.
• Approximately 25 percent to 35 percent of Wisconsin’s population benefited considerably from CTCL funding, while the remainder of the state’s population would have to make do with their existing budgets, supplemented perhaps by one of CTCL’s nominal $5,000 grants.

Partisan Bias in The Distribution of CTCL Grants: Why It Matters

In Wisconsin, CTCL grants were awarded to cities and towns, which are in charge of administering elections. Partisan bias in the distribution of CTCL money is important not only because it is unfair, but because it introduces an easily quantifiable structural bias that favors Democrats in the election system in places that are already more inclined to generate more Democratic votes than Republican votes.
Table 3 shows that big CTCL money went to some of the most heavily Democratic cities in the U.S.

• The Wisconsin Institute For Law and Liberty estimates that 216 communities in Wisconsin got CTCL grants totalling about $10.3 million.
• $8.8 million, or 85 percent, went to The Wisconsin 5, all heavily Democratic cities.
• $9.2 million, or about 90 percent of total CTCL spending in Wisconsin, went to the top 15 cities which are distributed among 11 out of 72 of Wisconsin’s counties.
• The top 9 CTCL grants all went to heavily Democratic cities. 80 percent of CTCL’s large grants, which amounted to 90 percent of all CTCL spending in Wisconsin, went to reliably Democratic cities.
• CTCL has repeatedly claimed that the distribution of their grants shows no partisan bias. This is because in Wisconsin, over 200 of their small $5,000 grants, which appear to have been handed out indiscriminately, accounted for only 10 percent of their statewide funding. The distribution of CTCL grant funding, on the other hand, shows considerable and systematic partisan bias.
• Between Dane (Madison) and Milwaukee Counties Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 364,372 votes in a state that Biden won by less than 21,000 votes. Taking into account grants to Fitchburg and Sun Prairie in Dane County, and West Allis in Milwaukee County, the two most heavily Democratic counties in the state got $4.79 million in CTCL grants, or 46.5 percent of total CTCL spending in Wisconsin while they make up only 25.6 percent of the state’s population..
• About 85 percent of CTCL’s Wisconsin grants went to the Wisconsin Five cities, whose average partisan bias is D+37 percent.
• 87 percent of cities that got substantial CTCL grants became more heavily Democratic. Even Republican majority cities like Wausau, Waukesha and Brookfield (in Waukesha County) became less Republican in 2020. This is not because of voters switching sides. Donald Trump increased his vote totals throughout these counties over 2016 by over 12 percent. It is because Democrat votes in CTCL cities increased by a larger amount than Republican votes increased.
• By targeting such heavily Democratic cities, even in Republican counties like Brown, Kenosha and Racine, CTCL money could be relied upon to generate the maximum possible vote gains for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in Wisconsin. Even in CTCL cities where Donald Trump won, he won by fewer votes than he did in 2016 as a result of a greater percentage increase in Biden votes, which is all that matters for statewide vote totals.
• The GOTV multiplier we estimate for these cities shows how a randomly targeted get-out-the-vote effort will affect their net additional Democratic votes. For example, in Madison an additional 1000 votes is expected to generate a net gain for Democrats of 670 votes. In Kenosha, it would be 160 votes.

The Impact of CTCL on Wisconsin’s Election, 2020

Joe Biden won only 14 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. In the ten counties Biden won that did not receive substantial CTCL money, the sum of his victory margin was only about 19,600 votes.

In the remaining 4 counties in which Biden won, all of which were CTCL counties, his margin was 380,371 votes. Biden’s margin of victory came almost entirely from CTCL funded counties, so that is where we look to attempt to discover the impact of CTCL funding on Wisconsin’s 2020 election results.
Many counties received more than one CTCL grant that add up to a substantial total, so we include countywide grant totals in our analysis. Our conclusions are based on a binary in group/out group analysis, where the in group consists of counties that were awarded over $50k in CTCL funds. These counties when combined exhibit different statistical characteristics than Wisconsin’s other 62 counties when we focus on CTCL spending as a determining variable. We conceptualize elections in CTCL counties as “Get Out the Vote” machines for Joe Biden based on our GOTV multiplier in Table 3, where a randomly targeted get out vote effort will generate net gains in votes for Joe Biden based on the D+ percentage. Since the get-out-the-vote effort in CTCL counties was not randomly targeted, this methodology gives very conservative estimates.

Using this method, and adjusting for systematic increases in turnout and population growth, we estimate with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that CTCL spending in Wisconsin caused: 65,222 Additional Joe Biden votes. Since Joe Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 was 20,682 votes, we conclude with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that in the absence of CTCL in Wisconsin: Donald Trump wins Wisconsin by 44,540 votes.

This estimate is closely aligned with our undisputed Texas results, where we were able to employ a more sophisticated methodology because of the greater number of counties that received CTCL grants, and higher and more continuous variability in grant amounts. In the Texas case, using BART analysis, we estimated that additional Biden votes that could be attributed to CTCL was about 200,000 votes, or 3.8 percent of his statewide total. In this case our estimate is 4 percent of Biden’s Wisconsin statewide total, so these results are closely aligned with our Texas results.

CTCL spending had other effects, in addition to increasing Biden’s vote total. With the exception of Fond Du Lac County, all of the counties which comprise our CTCL in-group shifted significantly toward Democrats in 2020, despite the fact that all witnessed significant increases in Donald Trump votes over 2016, usually in the neighborhood of 10 percent to 12 percent. This was not a systematic pattern that we observed in Wisconsin’s other 62 counties, in which Republican to Democratic shifts are far fewer and more randomly distributed.

Waukesha County, Wisconsin’s reliably red and third most populous county, shifted Democrat by an astonishing 5.85 percent in 2020, while solidly red Marathon County also shifted Democrat. Though they remained Republican counties, they are much less so now.

Extremely blue Dane County became even more blue, with the Democrat vote share increasing by an equally stunning 5.28 percent from an already high level. Unless this is reversed, one of the most significant effects of CTCL’s intervention in Wisconsin was to make its most populous counties significantly more Democratic than they were in 2016. These changes could have a decisive impact on elections in 2022 and 2024, especially if an organization like CTCL attempts to replicate their 2020 effort in the future.

We can assert with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that CTCL’s $10.3 million investment in Wisconsin flipped the state from red to blue in 2020. A bill to prevent private funding of Wisconsin’s elections in the future recently passed both houses of the Wisconsin legislature but was vetoed by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers. We doubt he will reconsider his veto after reviewing this report.

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In an article assessing Facebook last month, Washington Post writer Molly Roberts attacked whistleblowers for demonstrating a “lack of loyalty” to their institutions and described their actions as “betrayal.”  Roberts argued that it took “gumption” for whistleblowers to decide that they are right and that the leaders above them are wrong.  She wrote that these actions “look like “individualism to some and narcissism to others.”  In fact, the nation needs more whistleblowers, particularly after the corruption of the Trump presidency.

Fortunately, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Inspector General, Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl, a former whistleblower herself who filed a sworn affidavit thirty years ago against the confirmation of Robert Gates as CIA director, wrote a letter to the Post defending whistleblowing.  Ekedahl, who is my wife, noted that institutions, even religious ones, become loyal to themselves rather than to the missions they proclaim.  Ekedahl asked,  “Are victims of abuse by priests ‘betraying’ the Catholic Church when they become whistleblowers? Are civil servants who disclose corruption in their departments guilty of ‘lack of loyalty’?”

Investigative reporters of the Washington Post often have their exposes because of whistleblowers.  Watergate and Deep Throat is the enduring example.  In his excellent new book, “Midnight in Washington,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) documents the necessity of whistleblowers to the Congress, particularly the congressional intelligence committees.  As Schiff states, without whistleblowers the congress “would be almost completely reliant on the intelligence agencies to self report any problems.”

Nevertheless, whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were maligned in the editorial columns of the Post. David Ignatius, an apologist for the CIA for decades, charged that Snowden looked “more like an intelligence defector…than a whistleblower.”  Then-host of Meet the Press, David Gregory, asked Glenn Greenwald, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden…why shouldn’t you be charged with a crime.”  Greenwald’s “crime” was to report Snowden’s revelations in the U.K. Guardian.

So-called liberal pundits in the Post piled on. Richard Cohen, who beat the drums for war against Iraq, called Manning a “cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood.”  Ruth Marcus, another liberal writer for the Post, referred to Snowden’s “unattractive personality,” and gratuitously maligned all whistleblowers as “difficult ones, the sort who tend to feel freer to speak out precisely because they don’t fit in.”  Marcus argued that Snowden should have “stuck around to test the system the Constitution created,” and dealt with the consequences of his actions.  In other words, whistleblowers should ignore the caprice of U.S. jurisprudence and the reactionary politics of the U.S. Supreme Court.

We would have benefitted from whistleblowers who could have exposed the CIA’s ten-year campaign of sadistic torture and abuse. A letter last week from seven senior military officers officially condemned the torture carried out by CIA officers and contractors. The author of the letter, a Navy captain, called the torture of a terrorist a “stain in the moral fiber of America.”  He noted that his views are typical of senior members of the U.S. military.

The military officers, who had heard the harrowing testimony at Guantanamo Bay of a detainee in the agency’s custody, wrote their letter to urge clemency.  They noted that CIA agents and operatives subjected the detainee to “physical and psychological abuse well beyond approved enhanced interrogation techniques,” comparable to “torture by the most abusive regimes in modern history.”  The story appeared last week in the New York Times; there was no mention of the letter in the Washington Post.  A great deal of previous testimony from other victims didn’t get reported by the mainstream media.

Last month, the New York Times, but not the Washington Post, published important details of how the United States and the CIA deceived the Polish government on the details of the sadistic interrogation program taking place at the CIA’s black site in Poland.  Poland wanted assurances regarding the handling of prisoners at the site; the CIA refused to sign any documents.  It was particularly outrageous for the CIA to compromise the relatively new independent status of an East European country that had been behind the Soviet iron curtain for decades.

The European Court of Human Rights censured Poland for allowing torture at the black site.  Yet, the CIA treats the issue as a classified matter and refuses to allow former intelligence officers to discuss the issue.  Once again, the CIA is using its tool of censorship to prevent an embarrassment to its reputation and not to protect the national security interests of the United States.

The letter of the senior military officers documents in detail the cruel experiences of a former prisoner at one of CIA’s black sites.  The letter represents an authoritative rebuttal to former directors of the CIA George Tenet and Michael Hayden and deputy directors John McLaughlin and Michael Morell who argued in a book titled “Rebuttal” that the CIA got a “bum rap.”  Their book moved swiftly through the CIA’s Publications Review Board without change, although CIA’s leaders had misrepresented every aspect of the torture program to the Senate intelligence committee.  Meanwhile, critics of CIA’s torture program such as myself faced long delays and heavy-haded censorship in trying to publish criticism of the program.

Meanwhile, the CIA’s Inspector General report on torture and abuse as well as the Senate intelligence committee’s report remain classified and hidden in various governmental vaults.  As a result, the CIA has been given carte blanche in its efforts to deceive the American public on the torture program.  In June 2003, President George W. Bush recorded that the United States “was committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example.”  In fact, the CIA’s Inspector General brought examples of abuses to the attention of the Department of Justice, but Attorney General John Ashcroft had no problem with CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Not even the waterboarding of one detainee 119 times bothered Ashcroft.

President Barack Obama unfortunately contributed to the miscarriage of justice.  The Convention against Torture, which the United States ratified in 1994 bans torture without exception and requires that torturers be prosecuted.  Obama stopped torture but totally failed to carry out the second requirement.

As Ms. Ekedahl stated in her letter to the Post, “By shedding light on their actions, whistleblowers remain loyal to the supposed mission of those institutions—and loyal to our broader civil society.”  With a masthead that states “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” the Post should be defending whistleblowers and ending its campaign of vilification.

counterpunch.org

By Alexander RUBINSTEIN

A former employee of Facebook named Frances Haugen earned national renown after appearing before Congress on October 5, 2021 to accuse the company where she once worked of everything from poisoning the minds of young American women to aiding and abetting global evildoers.

While Haugen has presented herself as a “whistleblower” who risked it all to expose the secrets of the powerful, she was cultivated and legally represented by an organization led by former intelligence insiders with close ties to the US national security state.

Called Whistleblower Aid, the outfit was founded by a national security lawyer, Mark Zaid, who has been accused of ratting out his client, CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, to his employers in Langley. Zaid is joined by a former State Department official and government-approved whistleblower, John Tye, ex-CIA and Pentagon official Andrew Bakaj, and veteran US government information warrior, Libby Liu, who has specialized in supporting color revolution-style operations against China.

John Kiriakou, the CIA whistleblower jailed for exposing the agency’s role in the serial torture of terror suspects, commented to The Grayzone, “Mark Zaid presents himself to the public as a whistleblower attorney, however, he is anything but. Instead, he has betrayed his clients and come down on the side of prosecutors in the intelligence community. He is not to be trusted.”

Kiriakou continued, “My own personal belief is that he is the intelligence community’s preferred ‘whistleblower’ attorney because he’s willing to place their interests over his clients.”

Tech billionaire and media mogul Pierre Omidyar has provided funding to Whistleblower Aid, as well as to a public relations firm assisting Haugen. Omidyar has played his own role in US foreign interventionism, sponsoring anti-government media outlets and activists alongside US government agencies in states where Washington seeks regime change.

Following the October 5 remarks by the “Facebook whistleblower,” Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection Chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal commended Haugen for her “courage” and “strength” in “standing up to one of the most powerful, implacable corporate giants in the history of the world.” For her part, Haugen claimed to have come forward with her testimony “at great personal risk.”

However, Haugen is now set to meet with the oversight board at Facebook, suggesting the supposed underdog whistleblower had never been a threat to her former employer, and may have been colluding in a mutually beneficial operation. Haugen emphasized in her testimony that she “doesn’t want to break up” Facebook; she was merely looking for increased “content moderation” to root out “extremism” and “(mis/dis)information.”

While the public has been led to believe that Haugen embarked on her censorious moral crusade all by herself, driven by nothing more than her own sense of indignation and desire to stamp out “misinformation,” her testimony tracked closely with a narrative that has emerged from the US national security state and which aims to prevent the flow of information from counter-hegemonic “bad actors.”

The agenda was laid bare by Haugen herself, who claimed she worked alongside intelligence assets at a previously unknown Facebook “threat intelligence unit,” and made repeated reference to supposed malign activities by designated US enemies including Ethiopia, Myanmar, Western China and Iran..

As this report will reveal, Haugen appears to be little more than a tool in a far-reaching plan to increase the US national security state’s control over one of the world’s most popular social media platforms.

“Facebook whistleblower” Frances Haugen in 2015

The making of a phony Facebook whistleblower

Haugen first appeared in September 2021 as the supposed source of a leak called “The Facebook Files.” She was immediately hailed as a “modern US hero” in the media for secretly copying tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents and releasing them to the Wall Street Journal, which published a series of nine articles based on the documents.

The WSJ initially kept its source anonymous, rolling out the series two weeks before Haugen came forward in an October 3 interview with 60 Minutes. On camera, she complained that Facebook was “tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world.”

“Ethnic violence including Myanmar in 2018 when the military used Facebook,” narrated 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, to “launch a genocide.”

When pressed by 60 Minutes about what motivated her to leak the documents, Haugen answered vaguely: “at some point in 2021, I realized I’m going to have to do this in a systematic way and I have to get enough [so] that no one can question that this is real.”

Yet Haugen first divulged company information before 2021. In the final installment of the Journal’s series, the outlet revealed that Haugen first sent an encrypted text to one of their reporters on December 3, 2020.

That same article, published the day the 60 Minutes interview aired, reported that Haugen “continued gathering material from inside Facebook through her last hour with access to the system. She reached out to lawyers at Whistleblower Aid, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that represents people reporting corporate and government misbehavior.”

Haugen’s resignation with Facebook was effective in March, but the precise day of her client-attorney relationship with Whistleblower Aid remains unknown. What is known is that it all came together quickly.

John Tye, a founder and the Chief Disclosure Officer at Whistleblower Aid, told the New York Times that he agreed to represent Haugen “within a few minutes” of speaking with her.

On October 5, Haugen testified at a Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection. But already she had “spoken to lawmakers in France and Britain, as well as a member of European Parliament,” according to the New York Times on October 3, the day her identity was revealed on 60 Minutes. The outlet added: “This month, she is scheduled to appear before a British parliamentary committee. That will be followed by stops at Web Summit, a technology conference in Lisbon, and in Brussels to meet with European policymakers in November,” citing Tye.

Alongside Haguen’s big reveal came the launch of a new website and a new Twitter account, which was immediately verified. Haugen’s old Twitter account was locked when she went public and has since been deleted, while her old blog is no longer online.

It is instructive to contrast Haugen’s overnight verification with the way Twitter has treated others who have furnished secret documents in order to expose wrongdoing by the elite – namely, the jailed Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who never received verification from Twitter.

During her opening remarks to Congress, Haugen weaved a narrative that tied the State Department’s interventionist agenda to the Democratic Party’s crusade for online censorship. She commented that “what we saw in Myanmar and are now seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying no one wants to read the end of it.”

Later, Haugen nodded her head in agreement as Sen. Dan Sullivan called Iran the biggest state sponsor or terrorism in the world and China a “communist party dictatorship” that is the most serious competitor to the US in the 21st century. Oddly, she made no mention of malign activity by any US ally or country that was not currently sanctioned by the US Department of State.

At Facebook, Haugen claimed she worked as product manager on a “threat intelligence unit” at the company. “So I was a product manager supporting the counter-espionage team,” she claimed to Sen. Sullivan. Part of her job included “directly work[ing] on tracking Chinese participation on the platform,” she claimed. Further, she alleged that Iran used the platform to conduct “espionage” on the platform.

“I’m speaking to other members of Congress about that,” Haugen acknowledged. “I have strong national security concerns about how Facebook operates today.”

As journalist Kit Klarenberg reported, the little-known Facebook “threat intelligence unit” where Haugen claimed to have worked is staffed by former CIA, NSA, and Pentagon operatives. Those who work at the unit must have “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” according to a job posting.

Yet Haugen’s now-deleted blog and Twitter account feature no political content, nor does her resume. On Twitter, she frequently discussed taking Ambien and flirting with boys, while on her blog she wrote about cycling through Europe. Apart from a lecture she delivered on “The Intersection of Product Management and Gender,” and donations to the Democratic Party, she has shown little discernible interest in politics. So how did a certifiable normie with jobs at Google, Pinterest, Yelp! become an expert on Iran and China?

The background of Haugen’s shady legal team suggests she has been cultivated, coached and deployed to complete Facebook’s transformation into a fully-controlled vehicle of US foreign policy imperatives, willing to de-rank or outright censor any views the US government deems “misinformation.”

The best whistleblower outfit Pierre Omidyar’s money could buy

Whistleblower Aid bills itself as “a pioneering, non-profit legal organization that helps patriotic government employees and brave, private-sector workers report and publicize their concerns — safely, lawfully, and responsibly.”

But is this group truly the whistleblower protection outfit it claims to be?

In fact, Whistleblower Aid appears to have been modeled as a sort of anti-Wikileaks organization.  “Whistleblower Aid is not Wikileaks,” the “vision” page of the former organization insists. On another section of its website, it states, “No one should ever send classified information to Whistleblower Aid. Whistleblower Aid will never assist clients or prospective clients with leaking classified information.”

#WhistleblowerAid at work spreading message in DC for ppl to be lawful #patriots. Don’t be @wikileaks & ruin career. Hold Govt accountable. pic.twitter.com/sIKTbkiGgz

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) September 19, 2017

Whistleblower Aid was launched with support from Ebay founder and billionaire media mogul Pierre Omidyar. Through his Luminate foundation, Omidyar lavished $150,000 on the organization, while funding a non-profit, the Center for Humane Technology, that works for the same PR firm that represents Haugen.

Politico has portrayed Omidyar as a “tech critic,” suggesting his support for Haugen is motivated by his disgust at Facebook’s propagation of toxic content. However, as this journalist and Max Blumenthal reported, Omidyar’s political empire has functioned for years as a force multiplier for interventionist US initiatives.

Over the past decade, Omidyar’s various non-profits have sponsored the establishment of a broadcast outlet, Hromadske, in Ukraine that drove the country’s 2014 coup, backed anti-government bloggers and activists in Zimbabwe, and funded anti-government media in the Philippines, including 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa. In each case, Omidyar’s beneficiaries were simultaneously sponsored by US government entities dedicated to advancing regime change.

A further hint of Omidyar’s adjacency to US intelligence operations can be found in the 2018-2022 strategy plan of the billionaire’s Luminate foundation, which lists “counter[ing]” Russia and China & “provid[ing] critical support” to groups in “countries in transition” as top priorities.

The 2018-2022 strategic plan of @Pierre Omidyar’s @luminategroup lists “counter[ing]” Russia and China & “provid[ing] critical support” to groups in “countries in transition” as top priorities.

That’s code for supplementing US regime change operations. https://t.co/AXFBhAduCR pic.twitter.com/gwPmC9da2s

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 9, 2020

Whistleblower Aid rose to national prominence by representing the anonymous whistleblower who fueled the carefully confected Trump-Ukraine scandal that eventually led to former President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

But Whistleblower Aid is more than a mere law firm. It also “prep[s] clients in order to be focused on how to answer questions properly,” Mark Zaid, the organizations’ founding legal partner, told Gizmodo.

“We have media experts that we work with to guide folks with something as simple as, you know, where do you look when you’re talking to a camera or a host?” Zaid explained. “How do you best fluidly answer a question to come across in a positive way? Everything that might be connected to ensuring the individual’s image and substance are at their best.”

“The US government’s ideal whistleblower”

The rollout of the Frances Haugen story was methodical and lightning-paced, and clearly a collaborative effort. “I came forward at great personal risk because I believe we still have time to act,” Haugen told Congress. Sen. Blumenthal responded with a promise that Congress would protect her.

But was any risk truly present? In Haugen’s first conversations with Whistleblower Aid founder and Chief Disclosure Officer John Tye, she asked him for “legal protection and a path to releasing the confidential information.”

Zaid launched the group after serving as legal counsel for his co-founder, John Tye, when Tye supposedly “blew the whistle” on the State Department.

Tye was recruited to the State Department by former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Michael Posner. Now a prominent “human rights” lawyer, Posner was tasked with providing counsel to a group of seven Israeli generals accused by the United Nations of war crimes following Operation Cast Lead, a three-week long massacre of 1,400 Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, Wikileaks revealed in its release of US diplomatic cables. Ironically, Posner was also charged with overseeing the State Department’s review of those cable leaks.

Tye was named as the section chief for internet freedom under Posner at the State Department. But to understand Tye’s work at the State Department, it is necessary to revisit a speech from his former boss, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, delivered a year prior to Tye’s appointment at State, but nonetheless a blueprint for the kind of work the department was doing; attacking countries like Iran and China for “erect[ing] electronic barriers.”

It was during Clinton’s campaign for “internet freedom,” which established Tye’s position, that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an arm of the State Department, developed ZunZuneo, a fake social media service marketed to Cubans. This information weapon was deployed by the US in a failed attempt to spur Cuban youths to launch street protests and destabilize Cuba’s socialist government.

It was Tye’s job to travel around the world and push for “the open use of the internet, free from government interference and monitoring.”

However, following Edward Snowden’s exposure of mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, Tye began working explicitly against the open exchange of information by collaborating with the agency on tactics to undermine the leaker.

Around the same time, Tye learned about Executive Order 12333, which allows the NSA to collect information on American citizens outside of US borders. Tye “blew the whistle” in an op-ed at the Washington Post, allowing both the NSA and the State Department to review his disclosures before publishing. Neither made any changes to the policy.

Prior to speaking with reporters about his disclosure, Tye made sure he had a witness present and promised that he would not be revealing any classified information. “If you hear something that sounds like I am talking about classified activities or NSA activities, I want to tell you right now you misheard what I said,” his disclaimer went.

“The only reason why I ever got an NSA briefing was because we had to develop a response to Snowden’s leaks,” Tye told Ars Technica. “I never would have found out enough to file a complaint if it hadn’t been for those leaks.”

He also enlisted the help of Mark Zaid “to help him navigate the lawful reporting process.”

Despite being indebted to Snowden, and Snowden having actually been the first to expose how EO 12333 was “the wellspring of NSA’s collection of information,” Tye’s attorney, Zaid has repeatedly maligned Snowden.

“Unlike Snowden, Tye will not offer up any examples of actual unlawful surveillance he learned about while working at the State Department. He’s honoring his secrecy agreements,” Zaid has said.

Zaid, who has falsely accused Snowden of refusing to attempt to go through proper channels, argues that the best way to seek policy change is through official processes. And he has painted Tye as “a shining example of how a national security whistleblower should raise his concerns lawfully and give the system and public time to debate the concerns, rather than decide unilaterally as Snowden did…”

Tye quickly emerged as a model for disclosing government secrets, with corporate media headlines describing him as “the US Government’s Ideal New Whistleblower” and “the kinder, gentler, and by-the-book whistleblower.”

Just Security, a Democratic Party-oriented national security blog funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and featuring a board of insiders including Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, hailed Tye at the time as a “hero” on par with the late Senator John McCain. However, the site noted that “the jury is still out on whether Tye’s whistleblowing will lead to meaningful reforms.”

At the time, Tye claimed he hoped to “see a public response to my complaint that describes what changes have been made.”

Flash forward to September 16, 2021, and Just Security is still calling for reform to EO 12333. Indeed, Tye’s milquetoast brand of whistleblowing failed to result in any meaningful policy changes, though he did get some presidential lip service, commenting that “even President Obama has acknowledged that the issues raised since those disclosures have been important for our democracy.”

Coincidentally, days before leaving office, Obama expanded Executive Order 12333, allowing the NSA to share the data it warrantlessly collected with other intelligence agencies without the requirement of a court order. It was this executive order which enabled the NSA to wiretap Trump’s incoming National Security Director Michael Flynn, and leak the contents of his phone call with Russia’s then-Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak to the media.

Despite the abject failure of Zaid’s preferred “lawful” method of whistleblowing, he and Tye would go on to form Whistleblower Aid, but not before leaving the State Department to work for another shady outfit that was knee deep in NATO interventionist operations.

From July 2014 to July 2015, Tye served as the Legal Director and Campaign Director of Avaaz, a digital activist group and PR firm that helped drum up support for a no-fly zone in Libya, as Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal has reported.

During Tye’s time with Avaaz, which received early financial backing from Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the organization pushed for a no-fly zone again, this time in Syria. Further, Avaaz helped spawn a PR organization called Purpose, which handled public relations for the USAID-funded and al-Qaeda-linked White Helmets organization in Syria.

During the Arab Spring, Avaaz ponied up $1.5 million to “provide pro-democracy movements with ‘high-tech phones and satellite internet modems, connect them to the world’s top media outlets, and provide communications advice,’” according to the BBC.

Avaaz has set up proxy servers in Iran to support the Iran’s Green Movement and orchestrated a “three mile human chain handshake from the Dalai Lama to the doors of the Chinese Embassy in London.” More recently, the organization sponsored a rally demanding an investigation on Capitol Hill in response to the Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series, which featured Haugen as its source.

Time and time again, we’ve seen Facebook fail to address the rampant disinformation, extremism, discrimination, and hate on their platforms. Join us on Thursday as we rally on Capitol Hill to demand Congress #InvestigateFB: https://t.co/AoFpqSN75Q pic.twitter.com/LyvapuDIOw

— Avaaz (@Avaaz) September 29, 2021

Shortly before leaving Avaaz, Tye responded to criticism of the billionaire-backed group’s advocacy for a no-fly zone, writing “thousands and thousands of people will die, for years to come, if we turn away and wring our hands.”

Like his former client-turned-legal partner, Mark Zaid has clamored for ramped up US intervention in Syria, tweeting to then-President Trump “what are you going to do about Syria? It’s your problem now, We can’t stand by and let innocent people continue to be slaughtered.”

Whistleblower Aid, or whistleblowers played?

Early in Zaid’s legal career, he “helped lobby Congress to change the law so the Libyan government could be sued for its secret plot to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.” Since then, he has built a reputation around representing whistleblowers, though he is now “representing many of the federal officials who have been afflicted with the mysterious symptoms known as Havana syndrome.”

While Mark Zaid may earn the most corporate media ink of any lawyer specializing in supposed whistleblower cases in the US, he is also one of the most vitriolic antagonists of those who blew the whistle without official consent. Regarding Edward Snowden, Zaid has tweeted that the exiled whistleblower “in no way deserves a pardon.”

Zaid believes that only those who have exposed wrongdoing dutifully within an organizational infrastructure deserve to be designated as whistleblowers. If they have attempted to do so but found themselves stonewalled, and took their information to the media, in his view, that action classifies them as a traitor guilty of espionage.

Thus according to Zaid, Snowden is not a whistleblower, nor is Julian Assange a journalist. Zaid celebrated the June 2020 superseding indictment of Assange by the Department of Justice as “a message to those who want to undermine US national security that you will be pursued.”

Even Reality Winner, whose leak of classified information was spun by the media to advance the discredited narrative of Russian collusion with President Donald Trump – whom Zaid has attacked and even sued – is also not a whistleblower, Zaid argued in the Washington Post.

While Zaid has made his feelings clear towards those who leak classified information through “improper” channels, he has faced harsh criticism for his handling of the case of one of his former clients, CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling.

“WikiLeaks is aware, from those directly involved, of serious allegations that Mark S. Zaid revealed one of his clients to the CIA. The client was later imprisoned,” WikiLeaks has tweeted. CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou has written of Zaid: “Any friend or advocate of rats and snitches is no friend of whistleblowers.”

Wrong again, we know who you are, whether we agree or disagree, went to court or did not, whether we support Assange or do not. The whistleblower community knows you & your low bar. Keep telling us folks still talk to you, but remember some just like to keep their enemy’s close.

— Lisa Ling (@ARetVet) December 4, 2018

Whistleblower Thomas Drake has raised similar concerns, pointing in 2015 to transcripts detailing FBI special agent Ashley Hunt’s comments during the trial of Jeffrey Sterling.

“The CIA advised that on February 24, 2003, it was contacted by Mark Zaid and Roy Krieger,” Hunt told the court. “They told the CIA on February 24 that a client of theirs had contacted them on February 21, 2003, and that that client, that unnamed client at the time, voiced his concerns about an operation that was nuclear in nature, and he threatened to go to the media.”

Additionally, the FBI served Zaid with a subpoena compelling him to testify in the case of his former client, Sterling. Zaid has claimed that he did not breach attorney-client privilege at any time and called FBI agent Ashley Hunt’s testimony “hearsay.”

Sterling declined to comment to The Grayzone about Zaid’s performance as his lawyer, and whether he played a role in his prosecution.

“With no intention of stating an opinion one way or another, I will not comment on Mr. Zaid or his representation,” Sterling stated.

“All the Disney one needs and wants to be”

While Zaid maintains utmost hostility towards those who leak classified information, even refusing to work with them, he has no moral qualms about getting security clearances for “guys who had child porn issues.”

I’ve had cases where domestic abuse was the issue and the client got cleared; & I know of other cases handled by other lawyers. Many of these aren’t reported because they get resolved before there is an appeal to present or they are at agencies that don’t publicly report cases./1

— Leslie McAdoo Gordon (@McAdooGordon) February 11, 2018

Zaid also has a special place in his heart for Disney and potentially “Disney girls.” An archived version of a YouTube channel which appears to belong to him shows that he ‘liked’ videos including “Top 10 prettiest disney channel stars” and “Top 10 Disney Girls.”

One does not need kids to be all the Disney one needs and wants to be pic.twitter.com/3Fymj86zKG

— Mark S. Zaid (@MarkSZaidEsq) February 11, 2018

While Tye and Zaid’s records raise serious questions about their commitment to protecting whistleblowers at genuine risk of high-level retaliation, they are not the only staffers at Whistleblower Aid with close ties to the US national security state.

Whistleblower Aid CEO Libby Liu details how she is “fighting against the Chinese government”

The spooks at Whistleblower Aid’s door

At almost the same time that Haugen began working with Whistleblower Aid in the Spring of this year, the organization took on a new CEO named Libby Liu. Liu previously served as CEO of Open Technology Fund (OTF), which was established by the CIA-founded propaganda outlet Radio Free Asia as part of Hillary Clinton’s “internet freedom” campaign.

Prior to her role at OTF, Liu served as President of Radio Free Asia for over 14 years. The Radio Free Asia website credits Liu herself with creating the Open Technology Fund.

In addition to pumping millions of dollars into projects like Tor and Signal, the Open Technology Fund boasts that “more than two-thirds of all mobile users globally have technology incubated by OTF on their device.”

Moreover, OTF claims it “has investigated and exposed apps used for repressive surveillance throughout China, including tools used by the government to target religious minority Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province.”

OTF helped fund the 2019 protests and riots in Hong Kong “to provide fast relief for civil society groups, protesters, journalists and human rights defenders who have come under digital attack.”

Having helped rioters who invaded and ransacked Hong Kong’s parliament  to evade censorship, Liu is now working with a legal firm representing a client that will meet with the Congressional committee investigating the January 6 “insurrection” – undoubtedly to bolster the case for more internet censorship.

Another key figure at Whistleblower Aid is Andrew Bakaj. Like John Tye and Mark Zaid, Bakaj is not only representing Haugen, but promoting her in the media as well.

Bakaj also happens to be a former CIA officer and criminal investigator at the Department of Defense. Since leaving the agency, he has teamed up with his former attorney, Mark Zaid, and taken on similar cases including the “Ukraine whistleblower” and “State Department officials impacted by ‘Havana Syndrome.’”

#JulianAssange will finally be brought to justice. He is complicit in the deliberate leak of classified information that has jeopardized our national security and directly placed our sources and assets in grave harm. Perhaps one day @Snowden will see the same fate. pic.twitter.com/nFkvqvZKOC

— Andrew P. Bakaj (@AndrewBakaj) April 11, 2019

On Twitter, Bakaj mocked Julian Assange as he took refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, taunting him to “step outside” and get some Vitamin D.

Behind the carefully confected image of Frances Haugen as a courageous whistleblower, the stated views and questionable record of her legal team at Whistleblower Aid suggest she is little more than pawn in a much more far-reaching game aimed at enhancing the national security state’s already substantial power over social media.

thegrayzone.com

The platform facilitates illegal immigration and human smuggling because its mission is above mere nations.

By Micah MEADOWCROFT

By Jonathan COOK

The enthusiasm with which much of the media and political establishment have characterised Frances Haugen as a “Facebook whistleblower” requires that we pause to consider what exactly we think the term “whistleblower” means.

Haugen has brought to the surface a fuzziness in what many of us understand by the idea of whistleblowing.

Even Russell Brand, a comedian turned soothsayer whose critical and compassionate thinking has been invaluable in clarifying our present moment, joined in the cheerleading of Haugen, calling her a “brave whistleblower”.

But what do Brand and other commentators mean when they use that term in relation to Haugen?

Manipulated feeds

There are clues that Haugen’s “whistleblowing” may not be quite what we assume it is, and that two different kinds of activities are being confused because we use the same word for both.

That might not matter, except that using the term in this all-encompassing manner degrades the status and meaning of whistleblowing in ways that are likely to be harmful both to those doing real whistleblowing and to us, the potential recipients of the secrets they wish to expose.

The first clue is that there seems to be little Haugen is telling us that we do not already know – either based on our own personal experiences of using social media (does anyone really not understand yet that Facebook manipulates our feeds through algorithms?) or from documentaries like The Social Dilemma, where various refugees from Silicon Valley offer dire warnings of where social media is leading society.

We did not call that movie’s many talking heads “whistleblowers”, so why has Haugen suddenly earnt a status none of them deserved? (You can read my critique of The Social Dilemma here.)

My latest: Netflix’s The Social Dilemma, featuring Silicon Valley whistleblowers, seeks to explain how Google and Facebook have pushed our societies to the brink of collapse.

The alarm is justified – but the film is able to tell only half the story https://t.co/YZhrcFx3P8

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 25, 2020

But the real problem with calling Haugen a “whistleblower” is indicated by the fact that she has been immediately propelled to the centre of a partisan political row – yet another example of tribal politics that have become such a feature of the post-Trump era.

Democrats see Haugen as a hero, blowing the whistle not only on overweening tech corporations that are taking possession of our children’s minds and subverting social solidarity but that are also fuelling dangerous Trumpian delusions that paved the way to January’s riot at the Capitol building.

Republicans, by contrast, view Haugen as a Democrat partisan, trying to breathe life into a liberal conspiracy theory – about Republicans. In their view, she is bolstering a leftwing “cancel culture” that will see wholesome conservative values driven from the online public square.

Deep, dark dungeon

Let’s set aside this tribalism for the moment (we will return to it soon) and consider first what we imagine whistleblowing involves.

Haugen has indeed used her position as a former employee in a hyper-powerful corporation – the globe-spanning tech firm Facebook – to bring to light things that were supposed to be hidden from us.

That meets most people’s basic definition of a whistleblower.

But it is significant that whistleblowers are taking on institutions far more powerful than they are. Those institutions will try to fight back, and do so in the dirtiest ways possible when their core interests are under threat. Whistleblowers typically face a cost for what they do precisely because of the position they have in relation to the institutions they are trying to hold to account.

That is all too evident in the treatment of the bravest whistleblowers and those who assist them. Some are prosecuted, jailed and near-bankrupted (Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou, Craig Murray), others are driven into exile (Edward Snowden), while the unluckiest are vilified and disappeared into the modern equivalent of a deep, dark dungeon (Julian Assange).

My latest: The reality of Assange’s long years of persecution is far worse than even the picture painted by a new investigation that shows a thuggish, power-mad CIA bent on vengeance for his role in exposing its crimes https://t.co/iZnoO1N3QE

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) September 30, 2021

It is by virtue of their treatment that there can be little doubt all these people are whistleblowers. It is because they are telling us secrets those in power are determined to keep concealed that they are forced to go through such terrible ordeals.

We might go so far as to argue that, as a rule of thumb, the more severe the penalty faced by a whistleblower, the greater threat they pose in bringing to light what is supposed to remain forever in the dark.

Hidden secrets

One problem with thinking of Haugen as a whistleblower is that it is far from clear that she has paid – or will pay – any kind of price for her disclosures.

And maybe more to the point, it seems that when she turned to 60 Minutes to help her “blow the whistle” on Facebook she knew she would have powerful allies – right up to those occupying the White House – offering her protection from any meaningful fallout from Facebook.

“Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” says Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. She believes the federal government should impose regulations and plans to testify before Congress this week. https://t.co/YoKIyorZzu pic.twitter.com/RWlk9QOwZu

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 3, 2021

If reports are to be believed, she has already been signed up with the public relations firm that has represented Jen Psaki, the White House spokeswoman.

The support Haugen is being offered, of course, does not mean that she is not drawing attention to important matters. But it does mean that it is doubtful that “whistleblowing” is a helpful term to describe what she is doing.

This is not just a semantic issue. A lot hangs on how we use the term.

A proper whistleblower is trying to reveal the hidden secrets of the most powerful to bring about accountability and make our societies more transparent, safer, fairer places. Whistleblowing seeks to level the playing field between those who rule and those who are ruled.

At the national and international level, whistleblowers expose crimes and misdemeanours by the state, by corporations and by major organisations so that we can hold them to account, so that we, the people, can be empowered, and so that our increasingly hollow democracies gain a little more democratic substance.

But Haugen has done something different. Or at least she has been coopted, willingly or not, by those same establishment elements that are averse to accountability, opposed to the empowerment of ordinary people, and stand in the way of shoring up of democratic institutions.

Competing visions

To clarify this point, we need to understand that in our societies there are two kinds of ways power can be challenged: from outside the establishment, the power structure, that dominates our lives; or from within it.

These are two different kinds of activity, with different outcomes – both for the whistleblower and for us.

Scholars often refer to “elites” rather than one monolithic establishment to better capture the nature of power. We, as outside observers, often miss this important observation.

The establishment, in fact any major organisation, is likely to have at least two major competing groups within it, unless it is entirely authoritarian. (Even then, leaders of dictatorial regimes have to worry about plots and coups.)

There are rival visions of what the organisation – or state – should do, how best to manage its interests and maximise its success or profits, and how best to shield it from scrutiny or reform. Those inside the organisation are united in their motivation to maintain their power, but they are often divided over how that can best be achieved.

In western societies, these opposing visions typically revolve around ideas associated with liberal and conservative values. In the case of states, that simple binary is often reinforced by electoral systems that encourage two parties, two political choices, two sets of values: Democrats versus Republicans; Labour versus Conservatives; and so on.

It is part of the establishment’s success – the way it preserves its power – that it can present these two choices as meaningful.

But in reality, both choices support the status quo. Whichever party you vote for, you are voting for the same ideological system – currently a neoliberal version of capitalism. However you cast your vote, the same set of elites stay in power, with the same kinds of corporations funding them, and with the same revolving door between the political, media and business establishments.

Elite battles

So how does this relate to Haugen?

Our “Facebook whistleblower” is not helping to blow the whistle on the character of the power structure itself, or its concealed crimes, or its democratic deficit, as Manning and Snowden did.

She has not turned her back on the establishment and revealed its darkest secrets. She has simply shifted allegiances within the establishment, making new alliances in the constantly shifting battles between elites for dominance.

Which is precisely why she has been treated with such reverence by the 60 Minutes programme and other “liberal” corporate media and feted by Democratic party politicians. She has aided their elite faction over a rival elite faction.

Manning and Snowden challenged the very basis on which our societies are organised. They hurled a big rock into the placid lake that is the ideological background to our lives.

Manning exposed the elite consensus in support of voracious war industries determined to control the resources of others at a terrible cost in human lives and blow to the ethical values to which we pay lip service. Snowden, meanwhile, showed that ultimately these same elites – whether Democrats or Republicans are formally in charge – view us as the enemy, surveilling us in secret to ensure we can never organise to replace them.

Both Manning and Snowden threatened the national security state, and were vilified by both sides of the aisle for doing so.

No left-right divide

Haugen’s relationship to power is different, and we can make sense of it only by understanding what Facebook is.

This tech giant stands at the centre of a major elite battle: between old media and new media; between traditional, analogue corporate power and new models of digital corporate power; between elites that benefit from unregulated “free” markets and those who gain their power from regulation.

Within Facebook itself there are battles: between those who hold to its original ambition to monetise an endlessly connected world where we all get an online loudspeaker, and those who want the platform to become even more deeply embedded within the national security state and serve its purposes.

This is not a simple Democrat versus Republican divide. Facebook and other social media platforms – with their raucous effects on public discourse and their ability to amplify non-elite voices – have had a polarising impact that has cut across the usual left-right lines.

The complex skirmishes between elites have been further complicated by the increasingly libertarian, free market impulses within the current Republican party establishment (in tension with the right’s traditional focus on conservative and family values) and the “Big Government”, identity politics-obsessed impulses within the current Democratic party establishment (in tension with the left’s traditional attachment to more liberal, free speech values).

Paradoxically for many of us, Democratic elites often appear more visibly wedded to the national security state – and have stronger allies within it – than Republican elites. Just ask Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi how they respectively feel about the intelligence agencies.

Silicon Valley elites similarly straddle this divide, with some in favour of profiting from an online free-for-all and others in favour of tight regulation.

Secret algorithms

Haugen’s “whistleblowing” on Facebook is simply her going public that she favours one side of this elite competition over the other. She is not batting for us, the public, she is assisting one set of elites against another set of elites.

Which is precisely why her message to 60 Minutes and Congress reduces to a simple one: more regulation of social media, more use of secret algorithms, more darkness rather than light.

Those politicians who want greater regulation of social media platforms to keep out independent voices and critical thinking; the billionaires who want to reassert their gatekeeping media power against the tech upstarts; the Silicon Valley visionaries who want to poke their digital tools deeper into our lives have all found an ally in Haugen.

She does not threaten the status quo, a status quo that continues to plunder the planet’s finite resources to exhaustion, that wages endless resource wars around the globe, that is driving our species to the edge of extinction. No, she is upholding a status quo that will ensure the same psychopaths remain in power, their crimes even further out of view.

That is why Haugen is not really a whistleblower, brave or otherwise. Because there is a price to pay for standing up for truth, for humanity, for life. She is simply shoring up one elite path of several to more corruption, more deceit, more suffering, more death.

jonathan-cook.net

In the last few years, Facebook has become Public Enemy No. 1 in the media’s imagination, and Mark Zuckerberg is suddenly the creepy James Bond villain. Celebrated PBS filmmaker Ken Burns even ranted on a podcast that Zuckerberg was an “enemy of the state” who should be in jail.

After Facebook went down for six hours on Oct. 4, CBS late-night “comedian” Stephen Colbert joked, “Facebook did not say what might be causing the outage. Now, I’m no computer expert, but my theory is: A just God?”

It does not matter one iota that Facebook employees donated 90% of their political money to the Democrats in the last election cycle. Or that Zuckerberg donated $400 million to a “civic integrity” group that funded election monitors and health measures at the polls in 2020. It doesn’t matter how many Facebook posts they censored to please the left before the election; the outcomes weren’t favorable enough to the Democrats.

Liberal journalists compared the harm of Facebook to smoking, and Zuckerberg to a tobacco CEO. The team at “Morning Joe” used the CEO analogy after touting a poll that Zuckerberg now is less popular than Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Both sides are angry. Conservatives don’t like how much they are censored on Facebook. Liberals don’t like how conservatives are never censored enough for their tastes.

Colbert joked they’re objecting to quack medical advice; it’s where your “second cousin thinks the vaccine gives your pancreas Wi-Fi.” But they’re really upset that conservatives have used Facebook to go around the media filter. The media wants that filter imposed on Facebook. They need to “curate” information as fiercely as the “mainstream media” does.

CNN has gone so fiercely after Facebook in recent days you might think Facebook was somehow like Fox News multiplied by 100. They went live to a hearing on Oct. 5 where Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen ripped her ex-employer as “one of the most urgent threats” to the American people, and claimed that they drive children to suicide, “stoke division” and “weaken our democracy.”

The Democrats want a dramatic content crackdown. On MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” Rep. David Cicilline trashed Facebook, saying it is “a monopoly, it has monopoly power, it’s too big and too powerful to care.” That sounds like a decent description of our federal government, which is much bigger than Facebook. But Cicilline warned Facebook is a business, so “it in fact puts profits before everything else.”

He insisted not only must the government force more competition into the digital marketplace, “We have to in fact pass legislation that will make Facebook accountable for amplifying toxic and dangerous content.”

So what is “toxic and dangerous”? Let’s start with what “fact-checkers” are flagging as false. If you look up the category of “Facebook Posts” on PolitiFact, you quickly find that out of 1,456 posts, 88% are “Mostly False” (182 posts), “False” (765 posts) or “Pants on Fire” (357 posts). Only 65 are “True” or “Mostly True.” If PolitiFact throws the “False” flag, Facebook suppresses the content.

The most recent posts demonstrate that PolitiFact is especially upset at vaccination misinformation, claims about the 2020 election being stolen and anyone disparaging President Joe Biden and liberals. For example, they provided a “False” rating for a Facebook post stating, “The White House ‘created a fake set for (President Joe) Biden to get his booster shot.'” (It was a set inside an auditorium.) Then, there’s “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and wife Sophie faked their COVID-19 vaccinations on live television.”

The watchdogs of “toxic and dangerous” Facebook content have a tilt to the left… precisely like the “mainstream media” has a perpetual slant.

creators.com

After gaining access to their private Facebook group, MintPress can reveal that the people who sparked the July 11 protests in Cuba are planning similar actions for October and November.

The group, La Villa del Humor, is widely credited with providing the initial spark that ignited nationwide protests on the Caribbean island in the summer, the most significant demonstrations since the 1990s. On July 10, one of the group’s administrators posted this message:

Tired of not having electricity? Stubborn because they didn’t let you sleep for 3 days? Tired of putting up with the impudence of a government that doesn’t care about you? It is time to go out and demand. Do not criticize from home, let’s make ourselves heard. If we’re not going to do it, we’d better shut our mouths and not talk shit from home that doesn’t solve anything. Are we more afraid to go out than to put up with all this cheek? How is it possible? We demand that [Presidents Miguel Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro] also have blackouts. We demand that, since we have no food, at least they let us sleep. Hit the streets. Down with the opportunistic communist government now. This Sunday at 11am, Parque de la Iglesia. See you there. If you don’t go, stop complaining so much.

The moderator also went on to provide a detailed itinerary of the march, including instructions on where they would march and what items to bring.

News and images of the demonstrations were immediately signal-boosted by individuals and groups in the United States, including the large and vocal Cuban ex-pat community in Miami, politicians, celebrities, and even U.S. government officials, to the point where even President Joe Biden put out an official statement endorsing events. The massive, global exposure this protest received turned it into worldwide news and rallied U.S.-backed anti-government forces across the island into the streets. However, the movement failed to break into the mainstream of Cuban society and quickly collapsed after it became clear that it had nothing like the numbers needed to achieve critical mass.

October surprise

The administration team of La Villa del Humor considered the July action to be a roaring success, and the first step toward a revolution that will depose the Communist government, in power since 1959. Fresh from their achievements, the group is helping to organize two new actions: a planned general strike in October and a larger set of nationwide demonstrations for November.

Sunday, October 10 is Cuban Independence Day and a national holiday. Organizers are calling for it to mark the start of a general strike (paro nacional in Spanish) to cripple or topple the government. An announcement shared on social media (including on La Villa del Humor) states that organizations across the country are gearing up for a strike next week, with hashtags like #ParoNacionalCuba and #SOSCuba trending. “We summon all worthy Cubans, lovers of freedom, their neighbors, their friends and their families, to a National Strike on Monday, October 11,” the communique reads.

As with most anti-government activity in Cuba, there is very little transparency. No individuals or organizations are named, the announcements simply ordering all Cubans to put down tools. This leaves many on the island wondering whether this is simply another operation by the U.S. government, which spends tens of millions of dollars annually on clandestine regime-change efforts, creating or propping up anti-government groups for that sole purpose.

La Villa del Humor is playing a significant role in promoting the general strike. On September 23, the group’s chief administrator, Alex Perez Rodriguez, recorded a livestream for group members, beseeching them to act as one.

On October 10, we are calling on all of Cuba, on the occasion of another year of independence from Spanish conquistadors, to protest again to demand its rights, to express its longing for freedom and democracy. God willing, all the towns of Cuba will be willing to, and will want to, protest one more time and to take the streets.

“The dictatorship,” he insisted, “is about to collapse…” “I am certain that on July 11, Cuba began to head to democracy,” he added, before sharing a conspiracy theory about the country’s domestically-produced COVID-19 vaccines, claiming that they do “absolutely nothing but make people even sicker.”

Peaceful march or beginning of a revolution?

It is, however, the actions scheduled for November 20 that appear to be generating more excitement in the community. Marches across the island are planned, including in Guantanamo, Holguin, Camaguey and Havana, where organizers hope to begin at the iconic Malecón in Old Havana and end up in front of the National Capitol building, the headquarters of the National Assembly of People’s Power.

The movement is being outwardly advertised as a “peaceful march in favor of human rights and against violence,” and already has a who’s who of U.S.-backed figures such as the San Isidro Movement rap group and politician Manuel Cuesta Morúa signed on.

Yet, internally, the goals of the action appear quite different. Sharing an image reading “hit the streets until they [the government] fall,” Perez Rodriguez gleefully announced that “all of Cuba is preparing for this!”– quite a different message from the somber and respectful protests being reported on by sympathetic expat media in Florida. Other group members shared advice on planning and getting permits. Organizers hope to bring out thousands of people in Havana and other cities in what they hope will be the beginning of a revolution.

Conservative Cuban blogs claim that the government is already aware of the plans and has already taken action against those individuals whose names were on the protest permits.

La Villa del Humor: by Americans, for Cubans

Although the group is private, it merely took changing my name to a less English-sounding one and pretending I was from the group’s home town for the moderators to approve my application. The group itself was created in 2017, ostensibly as a local online message board and marketplace for the people of San Antonio de los Baños, a town of about 50,000 people situated in western Cuba. The name “La Villa del Humor” refers to a biannual comedy festival held in the town.

For a while it did function as such a service, as locals posted complaints about thoughtless neighbors, advertised second-hand goods they wanted to sell, or alerted residents about lost pets. In the past year, however, it has taken a radical turn, becoming a hotbed of anti-government organizing to the point where there are now barely any posts relevant to local people. Indeed, many of the group’s posters are not even from Cuba, their profiles revealing that they live in Florida. One particularly frequent contributor even lists his place of work as The Miami Herald, the city’s local newspaper. In the hours during and after the July protests, the group’s membership more than doubled before the admins set the group to private, meaning all new members need to be pre-vetted.

As such, the group has become a conservative echo-chamber, with users primarily posting anti-communist memes or cartoons or promoting actions against the Cuban government. In essence then, La Villa del Humor is a place where Americans go to cajole the residents of a small Cuban town into overthrowing their government.

None of the administration team except Perez Rodriguez reveal their identity, hiding behind pseudonyms, meaning that anyone could be running the group. Perez Rodriguez himself does not live in San Antonio de los Baños. In fact, he does not even live in Cuba; he left the island in 2010 and today works as a pastor at a Seventh Day Adventist church in southern Florida.

The involvement of foreign nationals in the domestic affairs of Cuba is on a level that can scarcely be conceived of in the United States, with even the most adamant RussiaGate proponents stopping short of claiming that Russians directly planned the George Floyd protests or the January 6 insurrection.

What is also clear from interacting with the group and reading its messages is that there is no interest in discussing or improving the lives and rights of Afro-Cubans, despite the fact that corporate media in the U.S. incessantly presented the July demonstrations as so aimed, even chastizing Black Lives Matter and other black liberation groups for refusing to support the protests and siding with the Cuban government. On the contrary, La Villa del Humor continues to be full of pro-Trump content and posts condemning former President Barrack Obama as a dangerous socialist.

A long history of meddling

La Villa del Humor’s arc from useful local service to foreign-controlled regime-change operation closely mirrors that of Zunzuneo, a Twitter-like app launched in 2010. Providing a dependable messaging service and undercutting the competition on price, Zunzuneo quickly gained a wide following in Cuba, attracting 55,000 people by 2012 — an enormous number considering the era and the lack of Internet access on the island.

However, at the height of its popularity, it abruptly shut down. Unknown to either the Cuban government or its public was that the app had actually been commissioned and paid for by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washington’s regime-change front group. The U.S. government’s plan was to first capture the Cuban market and gain the trust of the people, then to slowly drip-feed users anti-communist messaging, making it appear as if there was a groundswell of resentment. Then, one day, users would be alerted that a huge protest was happening and that they should all attend.

The NED was reportedly finding it increasingly difficult to hide who was behind Zunzuneo, at one point even meeting with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in an attempt to have him buy the service. An Associated Press investigation later found that the NED chose to pull the entire project rather than risk being caught in the act.

While it is still possible to argue that La Villa del Humor is a quasi-independent forum, Facebook certainly is not, and has aligned itself closely with the American government. Last year, after the Trump administration assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the social media giant removed all content praising the Iranian general, despite the fact that he was by far the most popular political figure in the country. Explaining its decision, Facebook stated that it, “operate[s] under U.S. sanctions laws, including those related to the U.S. government’s designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its leadership.” In short, if the U.S. government deems any group or individual to be a terrorist, then social media platforms are required to remove content challenging that idea.

Facebook has also signed a deal with NATO think tank The Atlantic Council, whereby the latter helps curate the news feeds of the Silicon Valley company’s 2.9 billion worldwide users. The Atlantic Council’s board of directors is a who’s who of establishment American power, including senior statesmen like Henry Kissinger, multiple military generals and seven former heads of the CIA. It is also directly funded by the U.S. and other NATO governments, as well as by arms manufacturers. That Facebook chose to hand over partial control of its content moderation to this group gives us a taste of just how close the relationship between big tech and big government has become. Facebook has also admitted to censoring Palestinian voices at the behest of the U.S. government and its Israeli ally.

Quo vadis?

Each year, the United States spends tens of millions of dollars in an effort to oust the Cuban government and install one responsive to U.S. interests. The most recent House Appropriations Budget, for example, allocates $20 million for “democracy programs” in Cuba, helping to support “free enterprise and private business organizations.” In case there is any confusion at what “democracy” means, it goes on to insist that “none of the funds made available under such paragraph may be used for assistance for the government of Cuba.” This is far from the only source of funding for regime-change operations. The U.S. Agency for Global Media, for instance, is spending between $20 million and $25 million on a similar goal.

Most of that money goes towards an information barrage aimed at convincing the Cuban population that their future lies with the U.S. and away from the Communist Party. Online activities are preferred, as it is much easier to remain anonymous and hide where the money for websites and publications comes from. The U.S. funds groups that produce all forms of public online content, including articles, videos and audio. It also provides training courses for young activists both online and in person, using tactics honed around the world to produce change.

They additionally fund and support Cuban artists, intellectuals and musicians who promote anti-government messages. One particularly notable example is rapper Yotuel and the San Isidro Movement, whose song “Patria Y Vida” has become an anthem for regime change. “Patria y vida” (fatherland and life) is a play on Fidel Castro’s slogan “Patria o Muerte” (fatherland or death). Yotuel led a sympathy demonstration in Miami in July.

The CIA also groomed Cuban professor Raul Capote to become the new president of the country. Unbeknownst to the agency, however, Capote was a double agent the whole time, and when the time came for him to lead a protest, he publicly revealed the plan and how he had tricked them into trusting him.

There is no way of knowing for sure who is calling the shots at La Villa del Humor; Perez Rodriguez denies any connection to the U.S. government. However, most of the Florida Cuban community have some links with Washington, even if they do not realize it. The U.S. has spent over half a billion dollars on beaming a TV and radio network into Cuba, creating large numbers of jobs in the process. Added to those are all those working for “non”-governmental organizations dedicated to cataloging human rights transgressions of the Cuban government. There are also contractors paid to build websites, translators, staff paid to work at events, and more. And that is not counting those directly involved in clandestine activities. Thus, the entire local economy is significantly buoyed by the South Florida-based, recession-proof regime-change industry aimed at Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries.

While Villa del Humor did manage to be the catalyst for a local protest that, in turn, sparked a significant event in Cuban politics, the actual extent of their influence remains highly debatable. What is beyond doubt, however, is that they are indeed planning and hoping that their July stunt was just the beginning and that the end is near for the Communist Party in Cuba. Time will tell whether they can marshal enough forces to take this to the next level. If they are successful, history will absolve them. If not, history will likely forget them.

mintpressnews

The American people have increasingly become aware that government surveillance and corporate censorship have combined to keep people ignorant and controlled. What is taking place has generated some dark humor. A friend of mine, also a former CIA officer, wrote to me recently and said tongue-in-cheek that he retains a lot of respect for the Agency because it is the only major government national security entity that does not read our mail and emails. Those jobs are the responsibility of the NSA and FBI. I responded that I would imagine that CIA does in fact read quite a lot of mail where it operates overseas but it is probably done the old-fashioned way by recruiting an underpaid mail clerk as an agent.

The whole issue of the government spying illegally on its own citizens has again made the news with the claims by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that NSA has been spying on him, presumably because he has connections that the government regards either as subversive or, in the new reckoning, as “extremists” who are potential “domestic terrorists.” Given the reasonable assumption that anyone who voted for Donald Trump might well fall under those categories, that means that something like half the U.S. population could be under suspicion.

Mass electronic surveillance of literally trillions of phone calls and messages worldwide without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment restrictions on searches without probable cause or a proper warrant issued by a judge has been the regular NSA authorized procedure at least since 9/11 and there is no reason to assume that it is no longer the practice. It basically is initiated by the agency involved (normally NSA or FBI) going to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court or to some other appropriate judge to get a warrant on an individual where there is some probable cause. Probable cause can consist of “someone searching the web for suspicious stuff.” The Court then gives its approval, which it does in the case of FISA 99% of the time. When that individual is then surveilled, the names of his or her contacts are also added to the investigation. And it goes on from there, expanding and growing until it includes thousands of phone numbers and email addresses, individuals who are overwhelmingly innocent of any wrongdoing.

So, it is safe to assume that many of us are right at this moment eligible for being monitored electronically by the federal government. If one combines that with the Biden Administration’s June 1^st announcement of a war on “domestic terrorism,” which it clearly considers to be a function of “white supremacists,” it is easy to see where all that is going. Biden pulled no punches, describing the threat from “white supremacy” as the “most lethal threat to the homeland today,” so that would mean that the government is doing all in its power to stamp it out, whatever it takes and whatever that means.

Surveilling ordinary Americans for what they might be thinking, which is what this comes down to, would be a George Orwellian 1984 tale for our times, updated from when Winston Smith was doing mandatory daily exercises in front of his television set. He slacked off a bit and the TV instantly admonished him. He then wondered whether it was possible that he and all the other residents of Airstrip One (once called Britain) are surveilled all the time. He concluded that they were.

So, if your television set suddenly speaks to you in the next few months, it might not be Alexa. The other development that has surfaced in the past couple of weeks is the increased corporate cooperation with what the government is saying and doing. Mainstream media has certainly done its share of obfuscation, including the current near total suppression of the story that a key witness who provided false testimony against journalist Julian Assange languishing in a British prison has turned out to be a pedophile, diagnosed sociopath and serial liar. But the major player is inevitably social media, which has enormous power in the United States and also elsewhere to shape opinions and propagate false information that serves the government agenda. The media has banned numerous groups, individuals, and links to sites from its pages, a barrier to free speech and freedom of expression. And it has, for example, enthusiastically cooperated fully with the essentially fraudulent government claims of Russian interference in the two most recent U.S. elections. It is censoring or denigrating material that is at variance with official policies, including, for example, Facebook’s pop-ups that appear whenever there is any article that contests the approved version of the response to the COVID virus.

Back in June, the Biden administration said it would also be working with some of the large high-technology and social media companies to “increase information sharing” to assist in combatting radicalization. Biden announced that his Justice Department would create ways for Americans to report radicalized friends and family to the government. One senior official put it this way: “We will work to improve public awareness of federal resources to address concerning or threatening behavior before violence occurs… If you see something, say something. This involves creating contexts in which those who are family members or friends or co-workers know that there are pathways and avenues to raise concerns and seek help for those who they have perceived to be radicalizing and potentially radicalizing towards violence.”

In other words, in plain English, the Biden Administration is calling on Americans to spy on friends, neighbors and family and reporting any “extremist” views to the authorities. Well, Facebook is now fully on board with more of the same, engaged in the “hot” war against the “white supremacists/extremists/domestic terrorists.” It has blocked or shut down many former contributors and also begun posting at least two versions of warnings to users. One targets individuals who might have personally been visiting an “extremist” site while the other encourages users to snitch on friends or family who might be enticed by such material. The personalized pop-up reads as follows: “[Name of Recipient], you many have been exposed to harmful extremist content recently – Violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment. You can take action now to protect yourself and others.-Get support from experts-Spot the signs, understand the dangers of extremism and hear from people who escaped violent groups.”

The snitch on friends version reads: “Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?-We care about preventing extremism on Facebook. Others in your situation have received confidential support.-How you can help.-Hear stories and get advice from people who escaped violent extremist groups-Get support.”

To be sure, one has to ask how Facebook knows that one has visited an “extremist” site since they have blocked such material. Are they somehow hacking into the personal accounts of their own users? The situation is dire, no doubt about it, but it has provoked a backlash, including this post: “Become the extremist Facebook warned you about!” One also has to wonder how Facebook will deal with individuals who complain about some other groups with a demonstrated history of promoting violence, including black lives matter, that are not white supremacist related. It will almost certainly do nothing, just like the federal government’s demonstrated “racially sensitive” supine response to a year of riot, burning, looting and homicide. In truth Americans are standing at the edge of a precipice with just one more “crisis” possibly coming that will tip everyone over the edge so we wind up with a totalitarian government which works hard to keep everyone safe by doing the opposite. We are almost there, and if you doubt it just go take a look at Facebook.

Whom does Facebook trust to censor?

A Ph.D. graduate from France.

Really.

The Frenchman, Emmanuel Vincent, started a group he calls “Climate Feedback.” It does “a new kind of fact-checking.”

It sure is new.

And wrong.

I released a video in which some climate scientists argue that climate change is not a “crisis.” They believe people can adjust to changing temperatures.

Twenty-five million people watched the video.

But now Facebook will not show it to you because Emmanuel Vincent suddenly called it “partially false.

Vincent would not agree to an interview. Nor would most of his “reviewers.” Only one, Patrick Brown, an assistant professor at San Jose State, agreed to an interview.

Brown doesn’t like that my video suggests that America can adjust to rising sea levels by building dikes and doing other things like Holland has.

That’s “not the mainstream view,” he says.

Brown claims sea levels could rise 200 feet.

“You’re citing an extreme,” I point out. “The IPCC doesn’t consider that likely.”

“I don’t know if they assess sea level rise out to a thousand years,” he responds.

No. Of course, they don’t.

In a thousand years, we may have carbon-eating machines.

It’s absurd that Facebook lets Climate Feedback censor me because of something that might happen in 1,000 years.

My video also questioned the claim that hurricanes have gotten stronger.

“Misleads viewers,” said Climate Feedback.

But on this topic, reviewer Brown said my video is accurate! “That’s wrong that you were criticized for saying that,” he says. “The IPCC (doesn’t) claim that (hurricanes)… droughts… floods are increasing.”

Later Brown emailed us, saying that “the problem is omission of contextual information rather than ‘facts’ being ‘wrong.'”

Oh. Climate Feedback’s “fact-check” wasn’t about actual facts.

“It’s a tonal thing,” Brown told me.

Facebook censors me because climate alarmists don’t like my “tone.”

I appealed, asking Facebook to remove the erroneous “fact-check.”

No one has responded.

Maybe, someday, skepticism about climate change being a “crisis” will prove foolish. But we don’t know that today. It’s a question that deserves debate, not censorship.

Someone should respond to climate alarmism, because people are terrified.

“Children are frightened that they’re going to drown,” I tell Brown. “Young adults aren’t having babies because they think climate change is going to end the world!”

Brown acknowledged that many people are too fearful.

“I get emails: ‘Is it worth it to have a kid … in this terrible world that’s going to be destroyed by climate change? I’m so scared about famine in my lifetime!’ I just reply and say, the reports don’t say that.”

But his email responses aren’t enough. We need Facebook to allow videos like mine to reach millions of people.

But Vincent doesn’t want that. And, amazingly, Facebook lets him decide.

It’s the second time his group smeared me. Last time, they didn’t even watch my video!

The worst part for me is that Vincent’s smear means that Facebook now shows all my videos to fewer people.

That hurts. Of the 25 million people who watched my climate video, 24 million watched on Facebook.

“I am sympathetic with what you’re saying,” says Brown. “At the same time, I like the idea of having some type of system where content can be compared to what experts think.”

Emmanuel Vincent says he hopes to expand his group and censor YouTube and Twitter, too. He’s eager to make sure people are frightened about climate change.

“What happens with groups like Climate Feedback,” says Brown, “they’re looking at emissions and nothing happens, policy-wise. … They develop this bias: ‘We really need to fact-check something that goes against the narrative!'”

Climate Feedback’s “fact-checks” do sometimes criticize alarmism, too, if it’s truly absurd, like New York Magazine’s cover story, “Uninhabitable Earth.”

But as I told Brown, “There were three times as many fact-checks on skeptics as on alarmists.”

“That’s wrong,” he responded. “They should be fact-checking the alarmist side just as much.”

They should. But they don’t.

Vincent and Climate Feedback doesn’t want debate. They want to silence debate.

Facebook lets them.

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“A lot of people have egg on their face” for dismissing the COVID-19 lab leak theory, tweeted ABC News ‘ Jonathan Karl this week. “Some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them.”

Or if Arkansas Tom Cotton did. “We still don’t know where coronavirus originated. Could have been a market, a farm, a food processing company,” he said in January 2020. “I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”

Cotton never said he was certain the virus came from a lab leak and never suggested a leak was deliberate. But as a Trump supporter, he was quickly smeared, as liberal writer Matthew Yglesias shows in a painstaking analysis — for pushing “conspiracy theories” (CBS News), “spreading rumors that were easily debunked” (Politico), “repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” (Washington Post), and “repeat(ing) fringe theory of coronavirus origins” (New York Times).

In each case, Yglesias points out, writers mischaracterized what Cotton said. “Media coverage of lab leak was a debacle,” writes New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, “and a major source of that failure was Groupthink cultivated on Twitter.”

One newsroom attitude was revealed by a tweet from New York Times COVID-19 reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here yet.” Her assumption that one could doubt China’s dictatorial and deceptive regime only out of anti-Asian prejudice shows the vacuous ignorance and vicious bigotry that Times management apparently values these days.

Such bias is old news these days, and the internet allows readers to seek other outlets. But one great threat to the free transmission of ideas remains: social media that routinely suppresses free speech. A prime culprit is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, which has become the most effective suppressor of freedom of speech in American history.

That’s something it boasts about. In April 2020, Facebook reports slapping “warnings” on 50 million COVID-19 items and adds that 95% of readers don’t seek the original content. It boasts that it “reduces the distribution” of information rated as “false” by its “fact-checkers.”

Garbage in; garbage out. Facebook purports to rely on international and national health agencies, like the China-dominated World Health Organization and the U.S.’s Centers for Disease Control, with its laughable requirement that summer campers wear masks this year. Its ranks of fact-checkers are undoubtedly tilted toward recent graduates of woke universities attracted to its headquarters in the no-non-lefties-allowed San Francisco Bay area.

The result is that, until last week, Facebook was suppressing for more than a year — a year in which governments and citizens were making difficult decisions — information suggesting the very lively possibility that the coronavirus leaked from China’s Wuhan lab.

Democratic congressmen are constantly pressing Facebook for more speech suppression. They seem to have no doubts which side Facebook’s processes will favor.

Despite Facebook’s boasted bans, doubts about China’s and Facebook’s insistence that Covid came from China’s live animal markets have percolated up in politically unlikely quarters. Among those taking seriously the lab leak theory are:

— Nicholson Baker in New York magazine last January.

— Longtime New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade May 2 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

— A group of 18 bioscientists calling on May 13 for a deeper investigation into Covid origins, including the lab leak theory.

— Former New York Times COVID reporter Donald McNeil May 17 in Substack. You may remember that McNeil was forced off the paper for repeating a word that offended a rich high school girl on a Times-sponsored jaunt to Peru.

Then, on May 26, the Biden administration announced it was actively investigating the lab leak hypothesis, meaning that it reversed its shutdown of the inquiry initiated by Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Only after the close of business east of the Rockies did Facebook waddle in (at “3:30 PT”) and announce it would “no longer remove the claim that Covid-19 is man-made or manufactured.”

So, for nearly 16 months, Facebook denied readers information about a serious theory whose exploration might have led to a reduced number of deaths and infections. Nice work, Facebook!

Facebook has been licensed to censor by Section 230 of the 1996 telecommunications act which was intended to, and for some time did, encourage the free flow of information. It does that by relieving websites of liability for information they transmit or refuse to transmit. Facebook’s conduct is in line with liberals’ retreat from their once strong support of free speech, which, as lefty reporter Matt Taibbi writes, “has been abandoned in favor of a politics that embrace making us of technology and extreme market concentration to suppress discussion of whose topics.”

Case in point: last fall’s New York Post story on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, stifled on laughably baseless charges of “Russian disinformation.” Didn’t see that on Facebook, did you?

The commercial result is that Facebook has grabbed advertising dollars that used to go to newspapers, magazine and television and radio. The civil result is that Mark Zuckerberg enjoys what the interwar Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said as the aspiration of Britain’s press lords: “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”

There’s increasing talk, among Republicans and Democrats, of repealing Section 230, “to force Big Tech to take more responsibility for the editorial decisions they take.” Tech moguls say that would benefit “a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies” is already the situation today.

More likely, they fear that repeal would, as left-wing economist Dean Baker predicts, cut into profits by requiring “a huge commitment of personnel” to monitor content and a nationwide legal staff to prevent trial lawyers from hauling Bay Area billionaires before local juries. Another possibility: “a massive migration to old-fashioned bulletin boards and other sites where people could post what they wanted without review.”

Facebook’s record on conspiracy theories has been wretched. It was happy for years to spread media stories on Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia, “a truly idiotic conspiracy theory,” as The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim put it, for which no evidence ever emerged. And Facebook was happy for months to stifle any mention of the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a lab leak in China. That’s zero for two, on two huge stories, with both errors pointing in the same political direction. Section 230 was supposed to give us a free flow of information, but instead, it’s given us efficient speech suppression.

Repeal could destroy Facebook’s business model, but from society’s point of view, the optimal stock price for Facebook is 0.

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