Free Republic

A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files....

Members of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) advisory committee on combating “misinformation” privately cast critics of their work, including those who raised the alarm over government censorship of free speech, as malign actors, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. An advisory panel under the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA), called the Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee, issued recommendations to CISA in June on how to address threats to “critical functions” of democracy, including public health measures, the financial system, elections and the court system. The subcommittee recommended CISA detect “informational threats,”...

he Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outsourced its "censorship operation" to a nonprofit it funded following a First Amendment lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, "implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional," according to an interim staff report by House Judiciary Committee Republicans shared with Just the News. CISA also wanted to use the Center for Internet Security, which operates the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), as its "mouthpiece" to obfuscate its own role in censorship, the report says. It cites spring 2022...

Republican lawmakers called on the Biden administration to monitor Chinese influence in higher education better after a report detailed that a number of universities had reorganized cooperation agreements with the Chinese government. Earlier this month, the National Association of Scholars showed how a number of Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes had reorganized and were still largely functional even as the universities claimed they had closed the centers. Under the Trump administration, the Chinese cultural centers had drawn significant scrutiny due to their ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The national security concerns voiced by government officials ultimately led most colleges to...

Don’t you dare compare the ideologically motivated mobs attacking and destroying shops and other property in Seattle with the ideologically motivated mobs that attacked and destroyed Jewish-owned shops in Nazi Germany during Kristallnacht in 1938! Not if you work for NPR affiliate KNKX in Tacoma, WA. KNKX has permanently booted University of Washington Professor Cliff Mass from his weekly weather segment for daring to make such a comparison on his personal blog. Reaction came swiftly from the left on social media accusing Mass of anti-Semitism and exaggerating what was going on in riots in Seattle. This led to KNKX removing...

Early in the pandemic, University of Washington professor Carl Bergstrom established himself as a coronavirus hawk, defending Britain’s Imperial College model that predicted up to 2.2 million American deaths and arguing that the health-care system would be “overrun.” During the initial lockdowns, Bergstrom warned against “kids hanging out by the lake,” criticized Florida for “leaving beaches open,” and mocked leaders who “want us all back in church on Easter Sunday.” Bergstrom’s subsequent conversion to “woke science,” however, was swift and absolute. On May 27, before the death of George Floyd dominated the news, the professor insisted he would wear a...

BOSTON (CN) – Tensions ran high at First Circuit arguments Tuesday where several judges raised their voices in frustration with the government’s attempts to defend an order that purged scores of academic and nonprofit scientists from the agency’s advisory committees. “You’d like to think that the EPA gave some thought to the effects of its actions, but this was just a fiat,” complained U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta Jr., an Obama appointee. Kayatta described the agency’s attitude as: “well, we’re the EPA, and you’re not.” But the judges took issue as well with the lack of specificity in the case...

BANGKOK, Thailand -- China's government sent more than one million majority ethnic Han Chinese to live uninvited in the homes of minority Uighur families in Xinjiang province and report if the Muslims display Islamic or unpatriotic beliefs which need to be forcibly reformed. "Had a Uighur host just greeted a neighbor in Arabic with the words 'Assalamu Alaykum'? That would need to go in the notebook," and reported to China's authorities, said American anthropologist Darren Byler. "Was that a copy of the Koran in the home? Was anyone praying on Friday or fasting during Ramadan? Was a little sister's dress...

A University of Washington student was arrested Wednesday for throwing paint on College Republicans members who were promoting a pro-gun panel the club was hosting that night. Diodato Boucsieguez, the CR group’s director of outreach, told Campus Reform that several local Antifa supporters were filming his group for about 20 minutes earlier that day for doxing purposes. He also recalled seeing an individual with bright orange hair watching him through the grass behind the table for several minutes before approaching and dousing the students with paint.

Full title: Ancient bubbles in Australian rocks show early Earth's air weighed less than half today's atmosphere Air bubbles trapped in 2.7 billion-year-old Australian rock suggest the Earth's atmosphere weighed less than half of today and was much thinner than previously thought. Researchers analysed the size of air bubbles that formed at the top and bottom of lava flows along the Beasley River in Western Australia's Pilbara region almost three billion years ago and used the data to calculate the atmospheric pressure at the time. The results suggest that the air at the time exerted at most half the pressure...

The two authors [Dylan Bennett of the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha and University of Washington Ph.D. candidate Hannah Walker] construct their argument calling Walker a racist by observing that the city of Milwaukee is home to the largest concentration of black people in Milwaukee. As in many metropolitan areas, many of the suburbs surrounding Milwaukee “such as Brookfield and Waukesha” are chockablock with white residents. Thus, the white scholars contend, any effort to reduce the scope of government is racist even if — especially if — proponents of limited government never use any overtly racist language. “Governor Walker engages a strong,...

The Obama administration is getting grief from a pro-life group for approving an experiment using the remains of the bodies of unborn children victimized in abortion for research continues in U.S. laboratories. Scott Fischbach, the director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life uncovered the information showing a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration uses brain tissue from aborted unborn babies to treat macular degeneration. StemCells Inc. will inject fetal brain stem cells into the eyes of up to 16 patients to study the cells’ effect on vision. In its press release announcing the clinical trial, StemCells Inc....

A public university sent an email to alumni highlighting the esteemed research of one of its professors — research that notes many similarities between the old Ku Klux Klan and its modern-day equivalent, the tea party. The University of Washington’s email to alumni asked the question four separate times: “Is The Tea Party like the Ku Klux Klan?” Christopher Parker, a UW political science professor, argues in a new book that there are major similarities. The book is titled “Change They Can’t Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in Contemporary America.” “In this commentary from Professor Christopher Parker...