Authored by Bill Rice via The Brownstone Institute,

The mountain of evidence proving beyond a reasonable doubt officials in the Biden White House bullied Facebook (and other social media) executives to perform Orwellian censorship has now reached Mt. Everest elevations.

Yesterday, I spent several hours reading media reports and Twitter comments after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) published the third installment of the “Facebook Files.”

Forget the Hunter and Joe Biden influence-peddling operations; if the revelations in these files don’t qualify as “impeachable offenses” nothing will.

I hope people will read articles published by the Washington Stand,  Fox News and this Twitter-thread summary to learn more details regarding this scandal and egregious violation of the US Constitution.

Instead of rehashing the evidence in these articles, here I simply parse one brief “note” composed by an unnamed Facebook executive who attended censorship meetings with White House officials. (These notes were subpoenaed by Rep. Jordan’s committee.)

This paragraph might be all readers need to grasp the scale of this operation and to learn how eager Facebook executives were to do the bidding of Big Brother (the government of the United States of America.) 

The One Paragraph that Tells Us Everything …

Facebook employee (name redacted for some reason) – July 16, 2021:

“And we attack virality aspect through feed demotions. We remove content that can lead to imminent physical harm. For content that doesn’t meet that threshold, we instituted borderline demotions. For example, someone sharing negative side effect posts. Similarly, posts questioning whether you get a vaccine under a mandate, whether it’s government overreach. We demote those. That’s not false information but it leads to a vaccine negative environment. When it comes to looking at COVID misinformation, it’s a different approach. What we normally do is just remove or leave to fact checkers. Here, we introduced a middle ground.”

What follows is my sentence-by-sentence parsing of information one can glean from this one stunning paragraph: 

“…we  (Facebook) attack virality aspect through feed demotions.”

My comment: Here we have Stanford University’s “Virality Project” in operation. The goal is to prevent certain information from “going viral,” to prevent Facebook’s contrarian users from reaching (and thus influencing) more than a handful of the platform’s one billion users.

For the record, the information Facebook ensured did NOT go viral turned out to be truthful information, information that could have saved millions of lives or prevented millions of people from suffering medical (or economic) harm.

As it turns out, almost every post that was blocked or demoted contained information which, if widely disseminated, could have perhaps debunked all the false narratives the government was committed to spreading. 

I’ve written this 50 times, but let’s make it 51: The government and its many narrative-protecting “partners” are the actual spreaders of toxic and dangerous misinformation/disinformation.

A Giant Protection Racket …

The entire censorship operation was an effort to protect the organizations that were spreading false and misleading information. 

The entire operation was/is a massive and coordinated disinformation project conceived and executed by at least 50 organizations that comprise the Censorship Industrial Complex – the most important players in this Complex being the US government and social media companies that have billions of followers.

As the first sentence in this paragraph reveals, Facebook admits (brags?) that it accomplished this objective via “feed demotions.” 

Trust me. I have first-hand knowledge of every censorship tool referenced in this paragraph … as I was one of the critical-thinking skeptics Facebook and our government worked tirelessly to make sure had no real influence on my fellow citizens. 

That is, none of my criticisms of any Covid responses ever went viral. In fact, these posts kept getting my account banned, suspended, or deboosted. Also, my potential “influence” in democratic debates is still being blocked by Facebook today.

(Aside: Many readers question why I remain on Facebook given how repulsive this company’s activities are. In today’s Reader Comments, I list some of the reasons I’ve decided to keep my account active. For example, I know FB is still censoring or deboosting my Covid posts only because, technically, I’m, still a FB user … to better keep an eye on what FB is doing and how it’s doing this … I need to be on FB.)

“… We remove content that can lead to imminent physical harm …”

My comment: Note here that Facebook (or the government) decided on its own what speech (“content”) “can” lead to “imminent physical harm.”  

All conclusions – expressed as statements of fact – are actually highly subjective and all tacitly accept that government sources and social media companies get to be the final arbiters of what is or isn’t “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

Again, everything the company said “can” lead to imminent physical harm … would not have led to imminent physical harm. 

FWIW, semantically, the word “can” implies that “cannot” or “does not” are also possibilities.

The first three words of the sentence simply say, “We remove content.” Again, the company is admitting what it did. This is as brazen as censorship gets.

As the social media company is still removing content today, I have concluded Facebook is not afraid of  Rep. Jim Jordan or this Committee.

(As one Twitter wag noted, what’s the Committee going to do about any of this? Send a “strongly-worded letter” to Facebook?)

“For content that doesn’t meet that threshold, we instituted borderline demotions.”

My comment: So if Facebook decided it couldn’t remove certain content, the company can at least “institute borderline demotions.” So the two possibilities are “total removal of speech” or “borderline demotions.” Got it.

For emphasis, Door Three: “Let people say what they want to say” or “don’t muzzle the speech of your users” … was not an option.

“… For example, someone sharing negative side effect posts.”

My comment: In America and on Facebook – per the non-stop coercion and threats of Biden White House officials – someone literally could not “share” with all their Facebook followers that they experienced a “negative side effect” from a “vaccine.” 

These Facebook users would simply be “sharing” a truth as they perceive it  … but they couldn’t do this – per Facebook and the Biden government.  

Which is our government. A government created by the US Constitution, whose First Amendment (allegedly) protects “free speech” and says the government can never bully citizens or companies into saying only what the government demands.

Let that sink in.

In a later note, one of the government’s key censorship henchmen (Rob Flaherty) actually says it’s his “dream” that Facebook would “play ball” with Big Brother (a dream that came true.)

My dream is that more Americans would wake up and understand that our “right” to free speech is being eviscerated by a coordinated and massive conspiracy of criminals and lying virtue-signalers. 

“… Similarly, posts questioning whether you get a vaccine under a mandate, whether it’s government overreach.”

My comment: Here we learn that Facebook users also couldn’t fully share the opinion that “vaccine mandates were government overreach.” 

Apparently our government has not “overreached” when it tells citizens and companies that they can’t share certain opinions. 

Whether people realize this or not, statements like this mean we might as well be living in North Korea or 1978 East Germany. Basically, one cannot accuse our own democratically-elected government of “overreaching” – per government decree!

“We demote those.”

My comment: Well, of course you do. Big Brother was watching you and you were watching every one of your billion customers … No unauthorized speech was going to “go viral” under your watch.

Facebook could (accurately) claim this company was bullied and threatened by the government, but its executives can’t claim they were overly troubled by this. Or that they forcefully pushed back against this bullying. What they did was roll over like a puppy.

When one of the largest and most influential companies in the world – one that has tens of millions of intelligent users who could have used this speech platform to push-back against “government over-reach” – lacks the guts to do this … this should tell us all something about:

A) How captured all Big Corporations are and … 

B) That not ONE of these companies has any brave or principled true “leaders” who are willing to publicly call out a tyrannical government.

“That’s not false information but it leads to vaccine negative environment.”

My comment: So, per official Facebook posting policy, the social media company knew this wasn’t false information – which means it was very likely/possibly  “true information.  Still, Facebook replies it had a great or valid reason to censor true speech … because said speech “leads to vaccine negative environment.”

Here we reach the censorship bottom-line …

 Nobody in the world (at least on Facebook) is allowed to to say anything that might create a “negative vaccine environment.”

Even if said vaccine has killed many people (which these non-vaccines probably have by now), no Facebook user can say anything “negative” about such a vaccine.

And vaccine deaths and adverse events were not and are not “hypothetical.” They were real and began occurring the first day the shots were administered. 

Jews, gypsies, and political dissidents were being killed, harmed or falsely imprisoned from the day the first Nazi concentration camp opened. But – per government policy (endorsed by every important organization in Germany) – nobody in Germany could say this was happening.

Does anyone get this analogy? If I tried to make this analogy on Facebook, I’d be banned.

Language in this same paragraph highlights the great concern of censors about preventing  potential “imminent physical harm.” Facebook users who were trying to report to their fellow citizens that this harm was not only “imminent” – it was happening right now – couldn’t say this.

“When it comes to looking at COVID misinformation, it’s a different approach.”

My comment: I’m a writer and try to choose my words carefully. This sentence should have at least said, “When it comes to looking at alleged COVID misinformation …” 

Facebook just accepts that everything “contrarian” users such as myself tried to post about the vaccines was definitely “misinformation” … because the government said it was. And Facebook believed the CDC over Bill Rice, Jr., plenty of authentic scientists and medical professionals and millions of other people who were trying to cry out, “This is NOT the truth! Do NOT trust these alleged experts!” 

The Back-up Plan …

“What we normally do is just remove (such content) or leave it to fact checkers.”

My comment: Note that by this time in the pandemic, removing such content was “normal” operating procedure for Facebook. By early in the vaccine rollout, Facebook had already gotten very good at “removing content.” 

Still, as emerging documents reveal, Facebook and other social media companies still weren’t removing nearly enough (true) content to satisfy the Censorship Pit Bulls working for Joe Biden and the more than 50 organizations that make up the Censorship Industrial Complex.

Thank you, Redacted Employee, for also mentioning the vital role played by the designated “fact-checkers” of the Censorship Industrial Complex. What Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube might not have censored, these companies “left it to” the “fact-checkers” to shut down or “flag.”

The “fact-checkers” were like outfielders backing up infielders in case a ground ball got under the second baseman’s glove.

I hope more Americans are now beginning to sense the massive team effort involved in making sure unauthorized speech either didn’t get posted or was demoted so such true speech didn’t reach hardly anyone.

And the last sentence …

“Here, we introduced a middle ground.”

My comment: “Middle ground?!” This is the compromise Facebook came up with so its executives, employees and army of 15,000-plus “content moderators” could sleep comfortably at night? Are they spinning their massive censorship operation to mean they fought back a little?

If this is the “middle-ground” solution, one wonders what the more extreme solution was or is. 

Outgoing Tesla CFO Zack Kirkhorn is making out like a bandit in exiting Tesla.

In fact, Kirkhorn is going to be reaping a fortune of $590 million upon his departure from the company, Bloomberg wrote this week. He amassed the net worth in just four years at the helm of Tesla’s finances, the report says. 

Despite not being part and parcel with the gargantuan compensation package the board awarded Elon Musk in 2018, Kirkhorn’s monstrous $590 million net worth is mostly made up of Tesla shares and options, the report says. 

His base salary was only $300,000 in 2022, but his options have a net value of about $550 million. 

“I would like to thank Zach Kirkhorn for his many contributions to Tesla over the course of 13 often difficult years. Much appreciated and best wishes for the next stage of his career,” Musk wrote about Kirkhorn earlier this week, after the news of his departure was announced on Monday. 

Kirkhorn had been with the company for 13 years. Tesla filed an 8-K Monday morning which stated that “Kirkhorn stepped down as of August 4, after a thirteen-year tenure with the company, the last four years of which he has served as Master of Coin and Chief Financial Officer.”

The company “appointed Vaibhav Taneja as Chief Financial Officer in addition to his current role as Chief Accounting Officer, to succeed Zachary Kirkhorn,” the regulatory filing reads. Taneja is 45 years old. 

Taneja has experience working for Tesla and Musk, having previously worked as “Tesla’s Chief Accounting Officer since March 2019, as Corporate Controller from May 2018, and as Assistant Corporate Controller between February 2017 and May 2018”.

He also “served in various finance and accounting roles at SolarCity Corporation from March 2016”, the filing concludes. 

The undisputed credit event of 2021 – a year when rates around the globe were near all time lows and bankruptcies were virtually unheard of – was the default and collapse of Chinese property giant Evergrande, which many feared would drag down the entire Chinese financial system due to its hundreds of billions in real-estate linked liabilities if the state didn’t step in (in the end, Beijing did help but in a much more subdued way than the bull-in-a-China-store nationalizations from the country’s recent history).

Fast forward two years and China is again emerging as the venue of what may be the year’s biggest default, one which – according to Bloomberg – could spark a “debt crisis that rivals China Evergrande Group’s default.”

On Monday, Country Garden Holdings, formerly China’s largest private sector developer and headed by China’s formerly richest woman, Yang Huiyan, officially entered a technical default grace period, failing to pay interest on two bonds and leaving investors in the dark after dollar bondholders said they’ve yet to receive coupon payments. That puts the firm—which had 1.4 trillion yuan ($199 billion) of total liabilities at the end of last year—on course for its first public default if it doesn’t make the payments within the 30-day grace period.

Until recently the largest private-sector developer by sales in a country who property market was estimated by Goldman as the largest single asset in the world…

…  the builder of more than 3,000 housing projects in smaller cities has long been a household name and employed about 70,000 (soon to be unemployed) people at the end of last year.

While the company’s giant footprint and massive balance sheet had given it dry powder to withstand the industry cash crunch that started in 2021 and has continued to date, leading to record defaults since Evergrande first missed bond payments, tumbling home sales and soaring refinancing costs are not only threatening that streak, but have exhausted the company’s reserves. And now, the company has less than a month to avoid default.

“Any default would impact China’s housing market more than Evergrande’s collapse as Country Garden has four times as many projects,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kristy Hung wrote in a report Wednesday adding that “any debt crisis at Country Garden will have a far-reaching impact on China’s housing market sentiment and could significantly weaken buyer confidence on solvent private developers.”

The news of the imminent default did not shock the bond market, which had been bracing for this outcome with Country Garden’s bonds already trading at deeply distressed levels.

Holders of the two securities said they hadn’t received the coupons as of Wednesday afternoon, and the firm didn’t respond to questions about whether it had made the payments. The developer’s next dollar bond to mature has dropped as low as 11 cents, while Country Garden’s shares plunged as much as 8.9% in Hong Kong on Wednesday to reach the lowest level since November 2022, and three brokers have downgraded the stock which has continued to slide.

The plunge in the company’s bonds have fed into broader unease in the Chinese high-yield dollar bond market, where average prices have dropped deeper into distress at about 67 cents—near the lowest this year.

Meanwhile, Beijing pretends that it is somehow immune to another crash in the housing market, and home sales in China are once again falling and dashing hopes that policy steps to prop up the industry would spur a lasting rebound. And with creditors demanding prohibitively high yields to lend more money, even Country Garden was forced to say this week that the refinancing situation has crimped its cash flow.

As Bloomberg notes, the company, which has developments in almost every province in China, is the latest developer to be jolted by the crisis in the nation’s real estate industry. Its annual report shows that about 60% of its projects are located in so-called Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities, which usually have a smaller population and weaker housing demand.

Country Garden was established in Foshan City in China’s Pearl River Delta region in 1992. Chairman Yang Huiyan has a fortune of $5.5 billion, making her the country’s fourth-richest woman, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Yang is the daughter of founding chairman Yeung Kwok Keung who transferred his stake to her in 2005. She succeeded
him as sole chairman earlier this year.

As an aside, while still filthy rich, Yang has seen her fortune slump by 84% since its peak in June 2021, including a drop of 8.2% on Tuesday alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Her fortune has shrunk by $28.6 billion from its peak, when she was Asia’s richest woman, leaving her with a net worth of $5.5 billion. That’s the biggest dollar decline among the ultra-rich tracked by Bloomberg’s wealth index over that period.

The 41-year-old tycoon’s wealth is mainly derived from her stake in Country Garden, whose shares have dropped almost 60% this year as tumbling home sales and soaring refinancing costs hit China’s real estate industry. Yang agreed last month to transfer more than half her personal stake, worth about $826 million, to a charity founded by her sister. She’ll retain the voting rights.

In a script right out of succession, Yang’s father co-founded Country Garden in 1992 and transferred a controlling stake to her in 2005 after she joined the company as his personal assistant to learn the ropes and eventually succeed him.

She became China’s richest woman at age 25, after Country Garden raised $1.65 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering in April 2007. In 2023, she took over as the sole chair after her father resigned, citing his age.

Yang fall from grace is not unique: China’s property tycoons have seen their wealth eroded after the government cracked down on excessive borrowing in the industry in 2020, making it hard for developers to refinance swelling debts. The ensuing cash crunch triggered record offshore defaults, wiped out billions of dollars of investments, and delayed construction of thousands of homes. Prior to the collapse, rapid expansion of the residential property sector made Yang, Hui and their peers some of the wealthiest people in the nation.

* * *

The question now is whether the grace period will be cured in the last minute or if the company will default. The prolonged slump in China’s property sector has brought previously sound companies to their knees, with the likes of Central China Real Estate, a state-backed developer, repeatedly using grace periods to buy time before stopping payments. In July, creditors of a unit of Dalian Wanda Group Co. and state-backed Sino-Ocean Group Holding Ltd. received coupons at the last minute.

Developers using grace periods for coupon payments “is a bad signal that reflects tight liquidity,” said Iris Chen, a credit desk analyst at Nomura International HK Ltd. But distressed developers might not care that much as their bonds are already trading at low cash prices, she added.

Via SchiffGold.com,

With much stronger-than-expected second-quarter GDP growth and continued labor market strength, a growing number of people in the mainstream now think the US has escaped the clutches of a recession despite the Fed driving interest rates to the highest level in 16 years. But there are plenty of signs that a recession is looming. For instance, a big plunge in the sale of cardboard boxes indicates a slowdown in economic activity.

There’s another off-the-beaten-path indicator that flashes recession — a big drop in the demand for gold in the technology sector.

The demand for gold in tech fell by 10% year-on-year in the second quarter to 70 tons.

The big second quarter drop continued a trend we’ve seen since the beginning of the year. Tech demand for gold through the first half of 2023 came in at 140 tons, the weakest H1 since the World Gold Council has tracked the data. This includes the first half of 2020 as governments shut down their economies due to COVID-19.

According to the World Gold Council, the big drop in demand for gold in tech was driven by weak consumer spending on electronics.

The weakness in gold demand in industrial applications carried into Q2 as surging inflation rates continued to severely impact the entire electronics supply chain, from chip manufacturers to end-users.”

Electronics production used 56 tons of gold in Q2, a 12% decline.

According to the World Gold Council, this is “a direct consequence of weak end-user demand for consumer electronics – the major demand area for gold in electronics applications.”

This has led to negative shipment forecasts for most major device categories in 2023, including smartphones, PCs and laptops. And the weakness is reflected in chip manufacturer financial reports.”

For example, Samsung recently reported a 96% fall in second-quarter operating profit.

Breaking down various categories within the electronics sector we find the amount of old used to produce light emitting diodes (LEDs), circuit boards, and memory chips all dropped in Q2 in response to constrained consumer buying.

The drop in demand for gold in the tech sector reveals a global slowdown in consumer spending. Price inflation and rising interest rates have squeezed consumers around the world. The drop in demand for electronics reflects real consumer behavior. It’s a much better indication of the condition of the global economy than government-produced numbers.

Despite the drop in demand for gold in technology, overall demand for physical gold was strong in the second quarter, driven by investment and central bank gold buying.

Industrial demand pales in comparison to the demand for gold in jewelry-making and investment purposes. Nevertheless, gold is one of the most useful metals on the planet and would probably have even more practical applications if it wasn’t so rare and expensive. The truth is gold did not become money because it wasn’t useful for anything else. Its role as money evolved because it is so valuable and has so many uses.

For instance, gold was an integral component in the mirrors on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Gold has also enjoyed a growing role in healthcare. The yellow metal is used in a large number of diagnostic tools and is of increasing interest to companies developing innovative new ways to treat disease.

Some uses for gold in medicine sound like something right out of a science fiction film.  A team of Chinese researchers announced they were able to partially restore the sight of blind mice by replacing their deteriorated photoreceptors – sensory structures inside the eye that respond to light – with nano-wires made of gold and titanium.

Ultimately, gold is money, but it serves many other useful purposes and that’s part of what gives it enduring value.

The two longtime directors of the National Institutes of Health and its National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci received 58 royalty payments from companies to license and deploy their products using taxpayer dollars, according to a new release from OpenTheBooks.

On Wednesday, the organization published more than 1500 pages of unredacted records revealing which companies were involved, and which NIH scientists were paid for inventions. The release came after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) battle with the NIH, reports Just the News.

The 56,000 transactions add up to more than $325 million, according to OpenTheBooks, though the individual amounts for each payment and corresponding license are not listed in the records.

Fauci received 37 payments from three companies between 2010-2021: 15 from Santa Cruz Biotechnology, which creates products for medical research including antibodies and made the fifth-most payments in the royalty database; 14 from Ancell Corp., which produces immunology tolls; and eight from Chiron Corp., acquired by Novartis in 2006. -JTN

According to the report, Novartis has received some $17 million in NIH contract payments and $15 million in NIH grants since the acquisition of Chiron. In 2004, Fauci’s NIAID had a contract with the company to develop an avian influenza vaccine.

Collins, meanwhile, who stepped down as NIH director at the end of 2021 before serving as President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 czar, received 21 payments from four companies between 2010 and 2018. Twelve of them came from GeneDX, which received $5 million in federal contract payments – mostly from NIH – since 2008.

Quest Diagnostics’ Specialty Laboratories, a biological testing company, made four payments to Collins. He received four more from Ionis Pharmaceuticals, originally named ISIS, which develops RNA-targeted therapeutics. The last entity to pay Collins was the Progeria Research Foundation – a nonprofit which does research for congenital disorders.

According to OpenTheBooks, obtaining the full names and license numbers for each payment – which the NIH had originally redacted until a court forced them to unredact – was crucial for “scrutinizing these records for potential conflicts of interest or public health risks.”

As Just the News further notes, Fauci has already admitted to receiving more than $45,000 in royalties nearly two decades ago when he was also NIAID director, for an experimental AIDS treatment funded by the NIH.

Authored by Tom Mitchellhill via CoinTelegraph.com,

Central bank digital currencies have turned out to be a popular talking point among the American public, garnering takes from comedians, rappers and presidential candidates alike.

Podcaster and commentator Joe Rogan has blasted the idea of a United States central bank digital currency, describing a digital dollar as a “game over” scenario for American citizens. 

In an Aug. 8 episode of the widely-watched podcast Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan and rapper Post Malone turned to topics surrounding the U.S. financial system, pausing to focus on the potential abuses of power that could come with CBDCs in the United States.

Joe Rogan’s podcast typically amasses more than 11 million listeners per episode. Meanwhile, Post Malone boasts a combined 31 million followers across X and Instagram. It comes as discussions around CBDCs have started to make their way into U.S. presidential campaigns. 

Rogan didn’t mince words when asked for his thoughts on a CBDC:

“No fucking way. No way. That’s what I think. I think that’s checkmate. That’s game over.”

Rogan spelled out a scenario where a tyrannical government could tie the flow of a CBDC to one’s social credit score, saying that citizens could easily be cut off from their finances for breaking the rules.

“If they decide somehow or another that you need some social credit score system and it’s for the benefit of society, and they outline that, they can track your behavior and your tweets and all your things […] They just decided you fucked up, and the rules are the rules,” he said.

.@JoeRogan Says ‘No F*cking Way’ to Central Bank Digital Currency: “That’s Game Over”@PostMalone asked @JoeRogan, “So how do you feel about the government’s digital currency that they’re working [on]?”

Rogan answered, “No f*cking way. No way. That’s what I think. I think… pic.twitter.com/OvQ7Cw1o4E

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 8, 2023

Malone also mentioned his concerns with the banking system in the United States, noting that FDIC insurance only covers bank account values up to $250,000.

The pair also discussed the controversial decision by the Canadian government to freeze the bank accounts associated with the “Freedom Convoy” truckers in February last year.

Malone argued that the U.S. government has too much control over the flow of everyday people’s finances and that they could potentially cut off funding to anyone at a moment’s notice.

Joe Rogan & Post Malone talk why we need #Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/77s2ywAhRl

— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDailyio) August 9, 2023

It echoes similar sentiments from avid supporters of decentralized cryptocurrencies.

Meanwhile, discussion around CBDCs have become a talking point in United States politics. In July, Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis swore to ban CBDCs in the U.S. if elected president.

On the other side of the fence, Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized CBDCs for being instruments of “control,” and instead promised to back the U.S. dollar with hard assets, including Bitcoin, if he were elected president.

Over a year ago Imran Khan produced a document at a public rally and described it as a diplomatic cable which proved the United States was leading a secret campaign to oust him as prime minister. His opponents, and the international community, shrugged off the allegations. He was Pakistan’s first ever prime minister to have been forced from office through a no confidence motion in April 2022, by the National Assembly.

This week, The Intercept has published a bombshell report based on a diplomatic “cypher” – or a secret cable – which appears to vindicate Khan’s prior assertions of a conspiracy against him by Washington. Crucially, it points to Khan’s weakness on the Ukraine war as a prime motivating factor in the US seeking his removal. 

“The US State Department encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept,” according to the Wednesday report.

It was only in the following month that Khan was booted from office as prime minister based on parliament’s unprecedented no confidence vote. 

The newly revealed diplomatic cable has shed light on the crucial meeting with the US delegation that took place in the lead-up to Khan’s ouster. The Intercept describes: 

The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the

The precise timing of the high level meeting is also very important, having occurred less than two week after then PM Khan visited Moscow on February 24, which was the very day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – the start of Putin’s “special military operation”. 

The March 7th meeting involved Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, and Donald Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. The diplomatic cable reveals that during the conversation Lu asserted that the US and European allies are “quite concerned” about Khan’s trip to Moscow and Pakistan having taken an “aggressively neutral position” on the Ukraine war under his leadership. 

🧵 THREAD: United States helped engineer a coup against Pakistan’s PM Imran Khan because of his neutral stance on Ukraine.

I’ve covered this story for over a year and everything Khan claimed has been confirmed yet again. I’ve said on numerous occasions that what really angered… pic.twitter.com/7Vja1uOz1U

— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) August 10, 2023

“People here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us,” Lu reportedly said in the meeting. He added: “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy,” according to the cable cited in The Intercept.

Below is the key and damning part of what was said next, according to the secret cable: 

“I think if a no-confidence vote against the prime minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the prime minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead,” Lu is alleged to have told Majeed, who sent the details of the conversation in the “cypher” to Islamabad.

It is this “all will be forgiven” line that’s being seen as the smoking gun, putting Washington as a key mover behind-the-scenes in the lead-up to the no confidence vote.

The Intercept then spells out, “One month after the meeting with US officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power.”

Currently, the report and news of the leaked cable is going viral across Pakistani and Indian media, and will likely spark further widespread pro-Khan protests, coming just after he was again taken into custody and sits in jail. Prior protests have at times descended into violence.

United States confirmed that documents published on Asad Majeed and Donald Lu conversation on Imran Khan was kind of accurate but made it clear that United States was not involved in any conspiracy. He confirmed United States was concerned of Imran Khan visit of Moscow and his… pic.twitter.com/njc6EHrhZq

— Jahanzaib Ali (@JazzyARY) August 9, 2023

The White House has meanwhile called his arrest an “internal matter” and has decried as “false” the allegations that the US orchestrated his ouster of his Ukraine stance. The State Department in a Wednesday daily press briefing declared the US wasn’t involved in any conspiracy, even when presented with the leaked cable’s contents.

Earlier this week, Chris Anderson, host of TED Talks, suggested that a ‘cage match-style debate’ might be a more fitting showdown for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg than an actual mixed martial arts fight. 

Musk is in luck after proposing a mixed martial arts cage fight against Zuckerberg on Sunday. However, on Monday, Musk found a way to potentially postpone the fight that would’ve been live-streamed on “X,” formerly known as Twitter, by saying: “Exact date is still in flux. I’m getting an MRI of my neck & upper back tomorrow. May require surgery before the fight can happen. Will know this week.” 

Musk told Anderson on Tuesday that a cage match-style debate “sounds like a good idea too.” He added, “This is really fighting as (I believe) a noble sport. We also hope, with humility, to express our admiration for those who have fought before for noble causes.”

That sounds like a good idea too.

This is really fighting as (I believe) a noble sport. We also hope, with humility, to express our admiration for those who have fought before for noble causes.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 8, 2023

In June, Musk’s mother said the best way for her son to fight Zuckerberg is “with words only.” 

No joking. Fight with words only. In armchairs. 4 feet apart. The funniest person wins.🤗😂 https://t.co/MpgFZmspP2

— Maye Musk (@mayemusk) June 22, 2023

However, the internet still wants a Musk v. Zuckerberg cage match…

We suspect any cage match between the billionaires with fists or words will be streamed on X. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The disclosure of a subpoena of Twitter by Special Counsel Jack Smith was surprising in a number of respects, including the hefty $350,000 fine imposed by U.S. District Court Beryl Howell (below) for a three-day delay as the company sought to address the demand.

However, the two most surprising, and concerning, elements was that the subpoena was secret and Howell justified it, in part, on Trump being a flight risk. Neither seems warranted in this case even the subpoena was in other respects warranted.

Special counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed and obtained a search warrant related to former President Trump’s account on Twitter, now X. However, he also sought the information with a nondisclosure order that prohibited X from disclosing the existence or contents of the search warrant to Trump or anyone else. However, Trump already knew he was under investigation, so why was there a need for nondisclosure?

The court found that Trump might change his course of conduct but that seems unlikely.

If anything Trump has been most consistent in his social media practices. Indeed, while some of us have criticized him for his posting, he has remained entirely undeterred.

The lower court stated that “The district court found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.’”

It is not clear how Trump would destroy the evidence in possession of Twitter, particularly after the company is informed that it must preserve and disclose the meta data.

Then there was the added rational that was tucked into footnote 2 of the D.C. Circuit opinion: Trump might flee.

Judge Howell actually agreed that the former President was a flight risk.

Process that for a second. Trump has 24/7 security. So Howell agreed that he might shake his sizable security detail, evade them, and go on the lam. He is one of the most recognized figures in the world. He would have to go to Mars to live incognito.

It is facially absurd. Trump has been sued and criminal charged across the country. He has never made a break for it. Where would he go? Cuba?

The finding of a flight risk undermines the credibility of the court’s order. This is not to question the ability to force the release of the information. However, the need for secrecy is far from evident. Rather it succeeded in preventing any challenge.

Here is the D.C. Circuit opinion: Trump-Twitter Opinion