Senate Quietly Passes The "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act"




Fast forward to this past Thursday, December 8, when the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act" passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report.
Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the passage of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of "disinformation and propaganda" and is shut down by the government. 


Senate Passes Major Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill as Part of NDAA


U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has passed the Senate as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower local communities to defend themselves from foreign manipulation.

“Congress has taken a big step in fighting back against fake news and propaganda from countries like Russia. When the president signs this bill into law, the United States will finally have a dedicated set of tools and resources to confront our adversaries’ widespread efforts to spread false narratives that undermine democratic institutions and compromise America’s foreign policy goals,” said Murphy. “I’m proud of what Senator Portman and I accomplished here because it’s long past time for the U.S. to get off the sidelines and confront these growing threats.”


In other words, the Act will i) greenlight the government to crack down with impunity against any media property it deems "propaganda", and ii) provide substantial amounts of money fund an army of "local journalist" counterpropaganda, to make sure the government's own fake news drowns that of the still free "fringes."
So while packaged politely in a veneer of "countering disinformation and propaganda", the bill, once signed by Obama, will effectively give the government a full mandate to punish, shut down or otherwise prosecute, any website it deems offensive and a source of "foreign government propaganda from Russia, China or other nations." And since there is no formal way of proving whether or not there is indeed a foreign propaganda sponsor, all that will be sufficient to eliminate any "dissenting" website, will be the government's word against that of the website. One can be confident that the US government will almost certainly prevail in every single time.








Most of the American media are “reporting” that President Obama ordered an investigation “Russian hacking of our election,” and that the intelligence community “confirms” that it happened. Yet there is not yetany evidence that Russia hacked the election or was responsible for the DNC email hacks. None.


When self-interested people and their media allies proclaim something is true, and for a chorus that drowns out any other views, I always suspect a con. It is so easy for the Left, since it controls education and the media, to sell any tale it wishes, from global warming to Michelle Obama as a glamorous fashion icon. Most people will simply fall in line because it is too much trouble and risky to dispute what is regarded as a received truth by the power elite.


THE WASHINGTON POST late Friday night published an explosive story that, in many ways, is classic American journalism of the worst sort: The key claims are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret.

These unnamed sources told the Post that “the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.” The anonymous officials also claim that “intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails” from both the DNC and John Podesta’s email account. Critically, none of the actual evidence for these claims is disclosed; indeed, the CIA’s “secret assessment” itself remains concealed.



Why it’s just as settled as the science that told us we wouldn’t be seeing any more snow, right about 2016 or so.  The Post did manage to allow that there might be a teeny-weeny bit of doubt about entirely unimportant details, though:


Deep down in its article, the Post notes — rather critically — that “there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.” Most importantly, the Post adds that “intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin ‘directing’ the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks.”

Where is the skepticism? The Russian hacking scenario is an excuse for the Democrats to explain away their loss without blaming themselves or their candidate, and it serves to delegitimize the next president – a bad thing for the country.
My own suspicion is that an insider at the DNC leaked the emails. There is as much evidence for the public to see supporting that assertion as there is for the claim that the Russians did it.








It is now clear that the coordinated media propaganda campaign to falsify delusional accusations about Russia influencing the U.S. election has a specific political purpose: To pressure electoral voters to dump Donald Trump before Dec. 19th, the day electoral votes are cast.

Across the entire left-wing media — which now teeters on the verge of clinical mental illness — you are witnessing a coordinated, timed, strategic assault on America, democracy and freedom itself. The Washington Post has been leading this charge by fabricating conspiratorial accusations out of thin air, failing to name even a single source to back up their deranged assertions.


Now, the left-wing media is passing out tin foil hats to everyone in sight and telling them to start hyperventilating about the “Russians defeated Hillary” narrative until a “consensus” is reached among them all. When a sufficient number of delusional leftists achieve a uniform hallucination that blames Hillary Clinton’s defeat on someone other than Hillary Clinton, the shared hallucination is then deemed a “fact.” (Read my previous article on how leftists turn mass hallucinations into “verified facts” through applied journo-hysteria.)


So far, the fabricated lie that claims the Russians defeated Hillary Clinton in the election has been repeated by Paul Krugman, Nate Silver, Keith Olbermann, democratic congressman David Cicilline, Michael Moore and a seemingly endless list of obedient Clinton-worshipping propagandists working to try to overthrow democracy in America.





What these delusional, mentally ill left-wingers don’t seem to realize is that, when it comes to election outcomes and electoral voters, they are playing with fire.

Trump supporters will not stand by idly and allow their nation to be stolen from them by a bunch of delusional crybaby journo-terrorists who still can’t understand that Hillary Clinton lost primarily because she is a horribly corrupt and deeply unlikable person. No, they have to blame something else: James Comey, the Russians, the Loch Ness Monster or maybe even gray aliens from planet Zorg.


What you are witnessing being rolled out now by the radical left-wing media is a desperate — and dangerous — gamble. If they achieve success and somehow manage to flip enough votes to name Hillary Clinton America’s new President, they unleash an almost immediate Civil War and likely military coup against the hopelessly corrupt Obama regime and its lapdog lying media (which exists now as nothing but pure state-run propaganda).


Make no mistake that armed American citizens, police officers and military personnel nationwide will have no hesitation in rising up against the attempted coup and defending their Republic by making sure Donald Trump is sworn into office. There is no circumstance under which the people who voted for Trump just lie down and allow their country to be stolen from them by delusional leftists who quite obviously need to be locked up in a psychiatric ward.


During an interview a few weeks back, a Washington Post reporter asked me, “Should we increase our security around here? Are we going to be safe?” My updated answer is, “You’re really not wise to keep playing with fire by fabricating false stories intended to overthrow the electoral process of our Republic.” You’re quite likely, in fact, to set off a bloody civil war that you cannot control.

These are dangerous times, my friends, and the unhinged political left has decided to go for broke to overthrow the democratic process that has driven the peaceful transition of power from President to President for the last 240 years. At this moment in history, the political left has essentially asserted that they demand a one-party state forever run by liberals, and they no longer accept the results of fair and free elections unless those results favor their candidates.

I repeat that last phrase, because you need to understand the gravity of what the lunatic left is now asserting. They are insisting that they no longer accept the results of elections unless elections go their way. This is another way the lunatic left essentially declares they are abandoning democratic processes altogether and demanding a totalitarian, one-party police state like you might see in North Korea, Cuba or Communist China.


Be careful what you ask for, all you liberals. You do not want to find out what happens when you tell the entire conservative base of America that they can no longer change their representatives in government by using the ballot box. What you are doing — all of you on the delusional left — is practically begging to unleash an armed civil war that you will most assuredly lose. (Badly.) By denying the legitimacy of elections, you are summoning the demons of war to our nation. You have no idea the seriousness of your assertion that democratic election outcomes will no longer be tolerated by the left unless they result in the preordained election outcomes desired by the left. Notably, if you do not believe in the outcomes of democratic elections that don’t go your way, you don’t believe in democracy at all.


Stay tuned for the next nine days… let’s see where the insanity of the George Soros-directed left-wing haters takes us. If they push this all the way to the point of a treasonous coup against America’s legitimate President-elect, you will likely hear many people announce a Second Amendment activation to save the Republic. (And yes, the entire U.S. military, law enforcement and armed citizenry will be working in unison to defend the Republic.)


The Second Amendment, as any historian will explain, was put into the Bill of Rights specifically to allow the citizenry a last-ditch means of self-defense against a tyrannical, corrupt government that refuses to abide by the will of the electorate. That’s the whole point of it! It’s not about hunting, and it’s not even about individual self-defense. It’s about defending the Republic against precisely the kind of coup now being attempted by mentally ill leftists posing as journalists.









Years ago, Rush Limbaugh coined the term, “Low-info Voters.” The term perfectly describes Americans, like 95% of my family, who only get their news from the mainstream media. Consequently, low-info voters do not know that the mainstream media is not fair and balanced. The mainstream media has become strong-arm enforcers of political correctness and operatives of the Democrat Party; 100% focused and committed to furthering the socialist/progressive agenda.


If you oppose the Left removing crosses from memorials, removing the Ten Commandments from public buildings, banning Nativity scenes and banning saying “Merry Christmas”, the Left claims you’re an extremist who hates homosexuals, suppresses women and want to cram your religion down everyone’s throat. Do you see how the Left’s extremism tactic works? They are the aggressors, but call you an extremist when you simply say, “No.”

Clearly, the Left has launched a pedal-to-the-metal campaign to cram their progressive agenda down our throats. For example: A Zales jewelry TV commercial featured a lesbian wedding. Homosexuals are only 2% of the population.  So why is featuring a lesbian wedding necessary? Fearful to admit it, most Americans still instinctively know marriage is between one man and one woman. But if they dare say it out loud, the Left will try to destroy them by branding their belief in tradition and biblical teaching extreme; outrageously claiming they hate homosexuals and want to see them tortured and murdered.


The Left’s tactic of branding the slightest opposition “extremism” has silenced many. I believe Trump in the WH has already begun liberating Americans from the Left’s tyranny of political correctness; muzzling free speech. I realize the Left will distort my statement to mean Trump has opened the flood gates to express hate. Nonsense.


The truth is Leftists are the ones who boldly and relentlessly spew hate against Jesus, Christians, Republicans, Conservatives (black and white), white people and police. Heck, Leftists have even given marching orders to their minions, declaring it open season on killing whites and police. Have you heard the slightest rebuke from the mainstream media?  No.
All I am saying is Trump has Americans timidly coming out from the shadows; feeling a little less afraid of exercising their Constitutional right to express their religious and political views.
And that brothers and sisters is good for all Americans.









An Israeli airstrike on a regime airbase outside Damascus last week targeted a convoy of chemical weapons en route to the Shiite terror group Hezbollah, a Syrian opposition figure said Sunday.


Fahed al-Masri also told Israel Radio that Islamic State, Hezbollah and Iranian militants would continue to advance on the Syrian-Israeli border as long as President Bashar Assad remains in power.

In a rare but unspecific acknowledgement, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Wednesday admitted that Israel was responsible for “what was done in Syria,” saying recent strikes were designed to keep “advanced weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction” from reaching Hezbollah.

Speaking to European Union ambassadors, the defense minister insisted that Israel was not interested in getting involved in the Syrian civil war, but would act to “defend the safety of our citizens and to protect our sovereignty.”









A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 25 people and wounded another 49 during Sunday Mass, in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory.
The attack came two days after a bomb elsewhere in Cairo killed six policemen, an assault claimed by a shadowy group that authorities say is linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and which claimed responsibility for a pair of assassination attempts earlier this year in Cairo that targeted Egypt’s former mufti, or chief Muslim theologian, and an aide to the country’s top prosecutor.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attack. However, Islamic militants have targeted Christians in the past, including a New Year’s Day bombing at a church in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria in 2011 that killed at least 21 people. More recently, the local affiliate of the Islamic State group targeted Christians in the Sinai Peninsula, where the extremist group is waging attacks against security forces. Christians endured a wave of attacks against their property and churches in provinces south of Cairo in the weeks and months that followed the July 2013 ouster by the military of an Islamist president.








The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people. For people who make their living on controlling media and information, it was akin to the barbarians breaching the walls of Rome. So the answer is to call for government regulation to combat what will be declared “fake” news or propaganda. It is only the latest effort to convince people to surrender their rights and actually embrace censorship. 








Accordingly Pushkov said that he would expect to see a more balanced approach toward Russia from a Secretary of State Tillerson. "If the appointment goes ahead, it will be a sign of Trump's political courage," his willingness to go against the will of the ideological wing of US foreign policy. "In addition, the Tillerson candidacy can be seen in the context of recent statements by Trump that the US will stop meddling in the affairs of other countries and engaging in the export of democracy."









The number of sexual assaults committed by migrants living in Austria rose by a staggering 133 per cent in 2016, figures obtained by The Freedom Party of Austria from the Ministry of the Interior have revealed.
Austrian interior minister Wolfgang Sobotka said the chilling increase was deeply worrying, as it was a sharp rise on last year when 39 migrants were identified as suspects. 
By September, at least 91 refugees had been confirmed as suspects in sexual assaults. 
 
The majority of suspects were originally from Afghanistan - which had an increase from 16 to 47 suspects within one year. 

According to the Ministry of the Interior, a further 438 Austrians were involved in other sexual assaults. 


German authorities say they are also facing similar concerns over a rapid increase in rapes by migrants.
Markus Ulbig, the Saxon Minister of the Interior for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, said that 169 sexual offences had been committed by migrants in 2016 in his state. 
This was compared with only 25 similar cases the previous year in Saxony, reports German newspaper Bild.
 
Of the 7,579 crimes committed by migrants, most of them were theft, robbery and bodily harm. 








Hundreds more civilians fled what remained of the Syrian opposition's enclave in Aleppo on Saturday as rebels and government forces exchanged artillery and mortar fire across the northern city.

State television station al-Ikhbaria showed footage of hundreds of people carrying children and belongings crossing on foot to the city's government-held areas, where they were being received by state social workers and security services personnel.

State media and other outlets loyal to the Syrian government are pushing to show a return to normalcy for Aleppo, delivering on President Bashar Assad's promise throughout the six-year war to return to the status quo ante.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said the Russian military was providing civilians who have left eastern Aleppo with temporary accommodation, hot meals and medical assistance.