Mike Benz vs the CCDH and the billion-dollar censors.
How the rich and powerful shape the media and control your mind. By Dr. Judith Brown
Mike Benz, Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) versus the CCDH.
Mike Benz is a former US State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Mr. Benz founded FFO as a civil society institution building on his experience in the role of championing digital freedom around the world in the public sector [1] here. As such, Benz is one of the most important researchers into freedom on expression online and his work is of great importance.
This week, a video has been released by another censorship researcher named Sayer Ji, featuring Mike Benz who is exposing the activities of the British and intelligence-aligned Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) in the USA. As the CCDH attempt to introduce its censorship plan in the USA had failed, because of the First Amendment, a subsequent approach was made to the UN. This video really is worth watching from beginning to end. Benz exposes the meaning behind language that is used to cloak the nefarious deeds of censorship, explaining exactly what is meant, so that listeners can understand the game that is being played. This is to control information – not only what you can say, but what you can hear or see, using your income taxes to reduce the spread of information that would undoubtedly benefit ordinary people.
You can see this video [2] here.
Matt Taibbi and the billions spent on censorship by the last two American administrations.
I have long thought that the censorship industry is a billion-dollar industry. However, now I have proof, since this story broke recently that described eye-watering sums spent on censorship from one source, the American government. Of course, this US administration is not the only source of funding of the control of information – the UK, the EU, European governments, American and European philanthropists, the UN, and American corporations all fund this industry that could not survive without its sponsors. The account published is one that was aired on a few Substack posts recently, but the research was by The Free Press, and it was also published by Liber-net.
Matt Taibbi is an American journalist, who was one of the investigators into the files that were released by Twitter (now X) on purchase of this platform by Elon Musk. He has a regular Substack called Racket News. This week in Racket he exposed that the past two American administrations, Trump’s first administration and Biden, spent altogether US$1.4 billion on censoring information. It is certainly possible that Trump, in his first term, had little idea of how and why this money was being spent, but the expenditure dramatically increased under Biden, as you can see from the graph provided in the link.
As Taibbi’s Substack is behind a paywall, I have published a report of this story on another website, so that you can read the whole story. Read this account of how your money is being used for surveillance, censorship, and to keep you uninformed, [3] here. Another interesting free speech platform is Liber-net. You can check this out [4] here.
Next week the reports of the hunt around the world for fact checking activities will continue, with reports about fact checking in Asia.