We can’t do a “deep state” update without first asking the question, “What’s up with former Attorney General William Barr?”

As it happens, Margot Cleveland has been wondering the same thing. Since the Mar-A-Lago raid, Barr seems to have forgotten the FBI’s role in advancing the Trump-Russia Hoax and, oddly, is taking the government’s current leaked narrative as truth. He’s even been implying, without evidence as a political enemy would, that Trump is guilty. Cleveland notes that in recent interviews, Barr “repeated several storylines seeded by the leakers” and had “clearly internalized the leakers’ version of events.”

Barr even told FOX NEWS’ Martha MacCallum that the FBI has “evidence to suggest they were deceived.” How can he state this as fact when any “evidence” is either heavily redacted or leaked?

Barr is wrong to trust the FBI, Cleveland flatly states. We agree, but let’s go further, to ponder why he would so bizarrely come down on their side?

https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/07/has-the-trump-raid-made-bill-barr-forget-all-about-deep-state-deceit/

Here’s an excellent analysis of Barr’s words and (lack of) actions from AMERICAN THINKER.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/bill_barr_reveals_his_true_colors_again.html

……….

Sean Hannity had Mark Levin on his Thursday TV show to talk about this, and, coincidentally, Levin brought up Bill Barr and his aforementioned trashing of President Trump. “[Barr’s] on cable TV more than erection dysfunction commercials,” Levin quipped. He also pointed out that the investigation of Trump is being run by the attorney general appointed by the man who may be running against Trump for President. “Merrick Garland should not be involved in this case,” he said.

Levin also criticized Barr’s depiction of Mar-A-Lago as “a country club,” as this property is “protected like Fort Knox,” with massive gates and armed Secret Service security. And it’s Presidents Clinton and Obama who actually allowed sensitive technological information to go to the Chinese, as Levin outlines.

If you want Donald Trump to be your nominee, Levin concludes, “SELECT HIM.” Don’t let these people decide for you. “They want to control who the Republicans choose.” If Trump were weak and ineffective, he said, they wouldn’t be bothering with him.

……………………..

Now, as promised yesterday, here’s that expose on internet censorship from Foundation for Freedom Online…

First, let me introduce you to Michael Benz, author of what is turning out to be a highly detailed series. (We’ll just be dealing with Part 1 today.) Benz, now executive director of the FFO, is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Technology at the U.S. State Department. According to Benz, we didn’t need a Mary Poppins wannabe to turn the Department of Homeland Security into a taxpayer-funded Ministry Of Truth.

The DHS’s own videos show them bragging about (among other things) how they worked for months ahead of the 2020 election to squash social media that were in the process of going viral to stop them from influencing “mainstream” opinions about the election. Citizens were targeted for “casting doubt on the integrity of the election outcome” by bringing up the problems with drop-boxes and widespread mail-in balloting. How dare they!

According to Benz, their partners in this effort received millions of dollars in federal funding.

https://imgur.com/a/EZlEQsX

According to Benz, these same partners, “a veritable army of private censorship specialists,” will be used “to hunt down the words of political opponents in order to neutralize digital speech before it can make political impact.” And DHS, through an in-house agency called Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA),” is doing all of this in the name of (what else?) “cybersecurity,” which makes no sense unless you look at the way they’ve defined their terms:

In 2017, “cybersecurity” was redefined as “cyber defense of democracy.” The following year, “disinformation” was effectively defined as “a threat to democracy.” Then, in 2019, they changed the focus from “foreign disinformation” to “domestic information.” (Benz explains how this came about.) Presto! “Cybersecurity” would now cover anything, even said by American citizens, that challenged their narrative.

Apparently, this shift was done so quietly that the Trump administration wasn’t even aware of it, so nothing was done to head it off. Once Biden was in office, that new focus was cast in cement, with the renaming of CISA’s “Countering Foreign Influence Task Force” to the less specific “Mis-, Dis- and Mal-information Team,” our new Ministry Of Truth. They’ve been hiding what they’re up to with a thick web of governmental jargon. As Benz explains, they also obscure their role by functioning as the coordinator of a censorship network and can’t be tied to any particular act. Benz compares this with our CIA using contractors such as Blackwater to outsource its dirty work.

CISA is run mostly by “ex-CIA, ex-NSA, ex-military and ex-private sector hacker professionals,” Benz explains. Regardless of how this agency has chosen to define “cybersecurity,” these military and intelligence heavyweights have no business being involved in the censorship of political and cultural narratives.

The network they run is chillingly called a “whole-of-society” mobilization, and consists of government partners; private-sector companies such as social media conglomerates; civil society groups such as academia, non-governmental agencies and think tanks; and media –- news organizations, ‘journalists’ and other influential voices. Equally unnerving is their dogma as expressed by this slogan: “Disinformation is a whole-of-society problem and requires a whole-of-society response.”

Translation: everybody has to get on board to silence dissenting voices. We all are expected to walk in lockstep, “supporting the same internet censorship actions, ‘disinformation’ best practices, and staying current on the latest ‘whole-of-society’ consensus around banned words, phrases, narratives, theories, insults, jokes, hashtags and memes,” Benz said. Non-conformists are to suffer “all the concomitant consequences.”

Benz says the most “gratuitously abused target” is the “post-2016 populist ‘right.’ Let’s see, who might that be? Could it be...“Trump supporters”? This group is part of what is called the “Disinformation Kill Chain.” I am not making this up.

So, the Disinformation Governance Board that we heard about this year was just the coordinating body for a network that already existed and still does. (We would add that this appears to be why they could and did claim THEY didn’t actually censor anything.) Understand: Benz said that “the demise of the Disinformation Governance Board DID NOT --- REPEAT, DID NOT, DEFEAT THE DHS MINISTRY OF TRUTH. We have only made it angry, surprised, and mildly inconvenienced at being forced to keep its clunky inefficiencies.”

Coming installments will share more about the evolution of this network. At one time, “Big Brother” had wanted to do it out of the State Department; then it was to be an intelligence function; then they considered putting it inside the FBI. All involved constraints that DHS does not have. So DHS it is!

Benz promises far more disturbing revelations and expects to provide “the basis for a full-scale bipartisan Congressional committee armed with subpoena power to secure public accountability and a permanent end to the stunning and expansive role that this DHS network has played in coordinating mass censorship of the internet.”

How else does the First Amendment even have a chance to survive?

https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/dhs-domestic-censorship-a-roadmap-to-the-deep-dive-series-2/