Parler – birdpuk

March 28, 2021March 28, 2021

Parler Says It Informed FBI Over 50 Times About Violent Content Before US Capitol Breach

The Parler social media website is displayed on a cell phone in New York City on March 5, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Social media platform Parler said it had referred violent content from its platform to the FBI ahead of the breach at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Parler made the disclosure in a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, in response to the panel’s request for documents. The company said that it had referred “violent content and incitement” from its platform to the FBI over 50 times before Jan. 6. It also warned the bureau about “specific threats of violence being planned” about the Jan. 6 incident.

“Parler now writes to set the record straight and provide new information about the positive role Parler played in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th, which should finally put an end to the spurious allegations against the Company,” the letter, penned by Parler’s attorney Michael S. Dry, stated.

The information is the latest in an ongoing feud between Parler and big tech companies that had sought to terminate the platform’s operation following the Jan. 6 incident. Apple and Google removed Parler from its app stores, while Amazon removed the platform from its web hosting service. All three companies took issue with the company’s alleged lax approach to violent content posted by its users and “repeated violations” of their terms of service related to such violent content.

Parler has denied the allegations and argued that the big tech companies had colluded against it as it had not taken action against competitors like Twitter and Facebook, which had similar content on their platforms regarding Jan. 6. Parler has also sued Amazon for a breach of contract, defamation, and anticompetitive behavior.

“There is no truth to the absurd conspiracy theories that have been put forth by Big Tech and its media allies to unfairly malign the company and which were referenced in the Committee’s Letter,” Parler said, according to the letter. “Contrary to what has been reported, and as explained in more detail below: the company is and always has been American-owned and controlled; Parler has never engaged in any collusion with ‘the Russians’; and Parler never offered President Donald J. Trump an ownership interest in the company.”

In its letter, Parler said that the company recognizes “legal limits to free speech” and that its policies “have always prohibited threats of violence and incitement on its platform.” It said that it had developed a “strong working relationship with the FBI” to foster cooperation with law enforcement, and ensure that unlawful incitement and violent threats were reported in a timely manner.

The company added that it had formalized its working relationship with the FBI in November 2020 and began to regularly forwarding screenshots of unlawful posts that called for violence or merited additional investigation for public safety. Such posts include users threatening to kill politicians and former Attorney General Bill Barr.

Parler said it had also alerted the FBI in December to content about specific threats of organized violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The company also sought to underscore the alleged unbalanced scrutiny of the platform, arguing that, out of 270 Justice Department charging documents it had perused, 80 percent of social media references related to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, while only 5 percent mentioned Parler.

The letter also denied other accusations that had been lodged against the platform, including alleged collusion with Russian businesses and alleged discussion with former President Donald Trump aides to offer the former president an ownership interest in the company.

“This is also false,” the letter states. “Based on our review of documents and interviews of relevant individuals, we have identified no evidence that Parler ever negotiated with anyone to provide former President Donald Trump with a personal ownership interest in the company.”

Parler went under leadership restructuring following its dispute with big tech. Former Parler CEO John Matze, who co-founded the company, said he was fired following a dispute with one of Parler’s investors, Rebekah Mercer, over content moderation. Matze said this week that he has filed a lawsuit against the company.

Source: Parler Says It Informed FBI Over 50 Times About Violent Content Before US Capitol Breach

March 11, 2021March 11, 2021

More Big Tech Hypocrisy: Apple Blackballs Parler… Again!

The Apple logo is seen on the window at an Apple Store in Beijing, China, on Jan. 7, 2019. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Commentary – Roger L. Simon

“One more thing!”

How many times have the millions—or is it billions—of Apple geeks across the globe thrilled to those words as the geniuses from Cupertino unveiled yet another dazzling product?

Sometimes these new gizmos arrived a little late but almost always with a better result for the user than their competition. They were usually more elegantly designed as well.

Steve Jobs changed our lives with the Apple II, the iPhone and the rest, continuing into the present day when so many of us are hooked on what they do. (Are your ready for the Apple Car? When do we get our new AR goggles?)

Too bad the company is such a reactionary, morally narcissistic organization, admonishing and lecturing the world to be what they decidedly are not, while censoring those with whom they disagree.

The latest display of this nauseating hypocrisy came from them denying entry to the app store for the conservative-leaning social media site Parler, not once, but now twice.

From the fan site AppleInsider:

“The Cupertino tech giant pulled the app in the wake of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. At the time, Apple said Parler could return to the App Store if it changed its moderation guidelines to comply with its terms of service.”

As it came back online, Parler changed its community guidelines to new policies written by Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff. But an App Store review found that the updated policies and moderation practices were insufficient to comply with Apple’s rules, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

“‘After having reviewed the new information, we do not believe these changes are sufficient to comply with App Store Review guidelines. There is no place for hateful, racist, discriminatory content on the App Store,’ Apple wrote to Parler on Feb. 25.”

Commenters on AppleInsider pointed out the painfully obvious hypocrisy here, of which many readers of The Epoch Times are, I’m sure, well aware.

Facebook and Twitter were loaded with at least as many—I would bet hugely more due to their size—incendiary posts before the Jan. 6 Capitol event than Parler.

Someone using the amusingly apropos handle “1984called” put it this way:

“You have got to be kidding. Apple, seriously, putting out this statement and yet they allow Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and just take a look at the top hip hop songs on Apple Music. Disgusting. Apple is spitting in your face and telling you it’s raining.”

Not bad. That about says it all about their naked partisanship… but… dare I say it…

“One more thing!”

Apple, like its Big Tech brethren, has a horrendous record when it comes to the People’s Republic of China. For many years, until others pointed it out, Apple cooperated completely with the communist regime in order to manufacture its products in China.

The astonishingly onerous working conditions for their Chinese employees would never have been tolerated in most Western countries, but why would Apple have cared? It’s all about the bottom line.

And after all, they didn’t seem to mind that the same regime was well known — I’m certain to a high level and undoubtedly educated Apple executives— to have concentration camps in Xinjiang Province reeducating and doing far worse to their Uyghur and Tibetan population as well as Christians, political dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners and so forth.

For a long time, Apple barely even criticized this. I don’t even know if they have now.

And yet they take offense at social media sites like Parler, playing the censorship game as if they had some kind of moral high ground.

How shameful. How repugnant. How opposed to the Bill of Rights.

But, alas, “one more very depressing thing.”

The Apple hypocrites have us trapped. Those of us, like me, who have been on their ecosystem for years (I went on around 2003 when we were developing Pajamas Media and my co-founder, who handled the tech end, put us on Macs. I’m writing this on a MacBook Air.)

We could go off, but where we would we go? Are the other systems any better? Microsoft? Android? Oh, please.

Not only that, transferring to another system with all our devices and storage is a difficult task for most people, fraught with the possibility of losing valuable documents and information of all sorts, not to mention consuming tremendous amounts of time and incurring considerable expense.

Apple knows that. So they go on their merry way.

What are we to do?

The problem with Big Tech, in general, is that it evolved through people with great technical expertise and monumental ambition, but little knowledge of history and less knowledge of the human soul.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, editor-at-large for The Epoch Times. His most recent books are “The GOAT” (fiction) and “I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic If It Hasn’t Already” (nonfiction). He can be found on Parler as @rogerlsimon.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Birdpuk.com.

Source: More Big Tech Hypocrisy: Apple Blackballs Parler… Again!

February 15, 2021February 15, 2021

Parler CEO Says Social Media App Is Back Online, Gets New Servers

The social media application logo from Parler displayed on a smartphone in Arlington, Va., on July 2, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

An executive with Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives, said Monday that it will resume service with new management—coming about a month after Amazon Web Services removed its service from its servers.

Interim CEO Mark Meckler said in a news release that the company moved to a new server farm, saying that users should expect to be able to use the website on Monday.

As of 10 a.m. ET on Monday, the Parler website appeared to be accessible via desktop. Epoch Times staff members reported they could not access the desktop version of the site. Users posted on Twitter that they were able to use the mobile Parler app.

Meckler said that new users should be able to sign up for the service within a week or so.

“We are off of the big tech platform so that we can consider ourselves safe and secure for the future,” Meckler said in the release. He did not disclose what company is hosting Parler.

Elaborating, Meckler said that the firm is using artificial intelligence programs and human editors to investigate speech that violates its terms of service agreement.

“Cancel culture came for us and hit us with all they had. Yet we couldn’t be kept down. We’re back, and we’re ready to resume the struggle for freedom of expression, data sovereignty, and civil discourse. We thank our users for their loyalty during this incredibly challenging time,” said Dan Bongino, according to the release.

Meckler was tapped as the company’s CEO after the former executive, John Matze, was let go by the company several weeks ago.

Matze had announced: “On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision,” Fox News reported. “I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.”

Following the Nov. 3 election, Parler saw a significant spike in users as many moved from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms due to fears of censorship. In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s Twitter suspension, Google and Apple took action against Parler, and days later, Amazon terminated its hosting service agreement with the company.

Parler, in response, filed a lawsuit last month against Amazon, arguing that the company violated antitrust laws and colluded with other Big Tech firms to deplatform the website. The company alleged in a court filing that Amazon was primarily concerned with whether Trump would have moved to Parler, rather than alleged violations.

The Epoch Times reached out to Parler for comment.

Source: Parler CEO Says Social Media App Is Back Online, Gets New Servers

February 8, 2021February 8, 2021

A Digital Apartheid Is Upon Us

Facebook, Google, and Twitter logos are seen in this combination photograph. (Reuters)

Commentary – John Mills

Col. (Ret.) John Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras: Cold War, Peace Dividend, War on Terror, World in Chaos, and now—Great Power Competition. He is the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense.

It started innocuously. It was an acceptable drag coefficient from Facebook, just be careful what you say politically when you post something.

The quick and seemingly inexpensive brown boxes from Amazon were addictive, so just accept the sneers and derision of the self-appointed newspaper of record (subsidized by Jeff Bezos, the common owner of both).

Tweet away but be careful next time you were released from the penalty box.

Search all you want with Google, just ignore the first 100 returns that were algorithm-ed to shape your world view.

It’s been 10 years since the kindred dalliance between the Obama Administration and the titans of Silicon Valley began to form and solidify. I point to 2010 and the summer push for Cybersecurity legislation as when the alliance began to take shape.

The initial encounters were tepid and taken initially with baby steps, but now it’s difficult to tell the difference between the Democrat administrations and Big Tech. Now we know there is a price for this lifestyle we became accustomed to and the gleeful surrender of our data. You will be deleted if you do not conform.

Instead of working our alternative worldview and the cyber infrastructure to enable it over the last 10 years, we willingly traded freedom for convenience. Now what do we do to counter-act this groveling obeisance we’re forced into when we’re the majority of the population? We need to walk away and build our own future.

Lawfare

The foundational battleground of societal warfare waged by the public/private progressive alliance is the legal battlefield. Social progressives have refined this capability to an efficient, highly effective, and ferocious art form. The alliance between the Democrat administrations and Big Tech aligned further with a legion of non-profit organizations that are highly lawyerized and have a very mature, repeatable model on how to leverage civil rights laws and environmental laws far beyond their original letter, spirit, and intent.

Cancel culture, massive coercion of the business environment, and intimidation of public figures (with some exceptions) is the current high point of this art form. This progressive alliance has used lawfare as the vanguard of their color revolution to take over America.

I would posit one of the initial groups that refined lawfare from the left was the Southern Poverty Law Center. From that successful model, other activist groups moved onto other cause celebs such as the Nuclear Freeze movement of the 1980’s, the take down of Big Tobacco in the 1990’s, and endless environmental browbeating that goes into attack mode when science is used to upend their litigation gravy train. It will never end—why not? It’s been very successful (and very profitable).

Those being faced with this Digital McCarthyism need to relentlessly establish their own legal take down strategy, just like they did against Big Tobacco. Using the spirit of the Civil Rights movement and the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA) they must develop, refine, test, and improve the arguments that demonstrate that although political speech is not a protected class in the CRA, the sheer volume and magnitude of Big Tech’s actions are beginning to negatively affect substantive portions of protected classes established in that law.

Some states do provide some forms of protection in relation to political views. There should be more development of the use of the Rico Act, Equal Protection, and Anti-Trust arguments. It will take time and there will be some court losses, but just like they did, we need to relentlessly return over and over and over again, building upon little legal successes here and there. There is money to be made in these cases and after some success is shown that will release a ravenous pack of trial lawyers upon Big Tech.

Our Own Data Storage

Creating alternative hosting environments for data (i.e. data centers where our data is often stored) is perhaps an action more within immediate reach in the near future. There may be big names in data center hosting such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), but alternatives do exist. This is becoming more and more of a market-based commodity, so steering clear of providers inclined to be partisan combatants is wise.

The mobile access to our data (smart phones, tablets, etc.) is a little more challenging. The two current dominant environments are Android and Apple (IOS). With that dominance comes the ability to essentially determine which apps are compatible and which are allowed to operate in their environments.

In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 chaos in Washington D.C., Twitter conducted great purges of users. Many immediately moved to Parler. Parler made a bad decision and assumed their App would be offered and maintained on these environments. When Android and Apple made decisions to not offer or maintain the Parler App, it brought Parler to an immediate halt.

Gab, Rumble, and others had developed their environments to be more old-school, web-based, and independent of Android and Apple and soon took many of the Twitter to Parler refugees. The scent of coordination between Twitter, Android, and Apple gives an opening to an anti-trust lawfare counterattack.

As dominant as Android and Apple may seem right now, their pre-eminence does not stretch that far into the past. And believe it or not, there are rising alternatives. In the fast-paced tech world, the peak of dominance is a transitory vapor that can come and go quickly.

Mobile alternatives are in the making, we have to vote with our dollars to help accelerate this evolution. Disruptive events such as 5G are always opportunities for those companies more agile, hungry, and adaptive. Android and Apple need to watch their rear-view mirrors.

Financial Systems

The growing partisan behavior by financial system providers to enforce their worldviews is perhaps the most disturbing part of recent events. This thinly veiled social activism, may have started by targeting gun sales, but is becoming a standard part of financial firm social activism and is being applied across a larger target set in support of broader issues.

Access to capital is the lifeblood of businesses and citizens, and social activists know this. These financial providers are showing bolder willingness to asphyxiate any form of opposition. The financial sector not only introduced measures to limit conservatives, but at the same time, provide support to activist groups such as BLM.

The all-in nature of these financial firms is craven. Because of this, a clarion call is sounded to establish new financial firms to ensure the full spectrum and diversity of society is serviced. Bank of America started small to ensure migrants received access to capital and financial services. It can be done again.

Taking from one of Jeff Bezo’s toys, let’s make sure democracy and our incredible republic do not die in the darkness of this oppressive Digital Apartheid.

We can begin this journey in simple things such as web browsing using alternatives such as Dissenter, Brave, and DuckDuckGo instead of the web browser that must not be named. The current Tech Titans started out small and grew giant. With a little bit of our coordinated effort they can be retired and become remembered only as questions in future versions of nostalgia trivia games. The sooner we start, the sooner it will happen.

Retired Col. John Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras: Cold War, Peace Dividend, War on Terror, World in Chaos, and now, Great Power Competition. He is the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense. @ColonelRETJOHN

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Source: A Digital Apartheid Is Upon Us

February 7, 2021February 7, 2021

Trump Mulling Whether to Launch Own Social Media Platform, Says Jason Miller

Then-President Donald Trump greets the crowd at the "Stop The Steal" rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, Jason Miller, said on Saturday that Trump is deciding how he will reemerge on social media, including considering whether to create his own platform.

“I would expect that we will see the president reemerge on social media,” Miller told Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125.

“Whether that’s joining an existing platform or creating his new platform, there are a number of different options and a number of different meetings that they’ve been having on that front. Nothing is imminent on that.”

When pressed for more information about Trump’s social media plans, Miller said“all options are on the table.”

“A number of things are being discussed. So stay tuned there because you know he’s going to be back on social media. We’re just kind of figuring out which avenue makes the most sense,” he said.

Trump, who has been one of the most active presidents on social media, was permanently suspended from Twitter and remains indefinitely banned from Facebook following the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. The targeted policing of Trump’s posts occurred throughout his presidency and ramped up following the Nov. 3 election, when the former president and his team repeatedly joined calls to independently review the integrity of the results in several states.

Other platforms such as YouTube, Instagram (which is owned by Facebook), and Snapchat have also banned the former president from using their platforms.

The social media companies justified their censorship as an effort to guard against violence, claiming that Trump had violated their terms of use. Their move to prevent Trump from expressing his views on the platforms came after the media, lawmakers, and other critics blamed the former president’s remarks for inciting violence, which they claim led to the riots on Jan. 6.

In the upcoming Senate impeachment trial, Trump’s team plans to defend the former president by arguing that the trial is unconstitutional and that he was exercising his First Amendment rights when he made a speech on Jan. 6.

Trump had addressed a crowd in Washington D.C. as Congress met to count electoral college votes where he reiterated allegations about election irregularities and potential fraud, and his dissatisfaction with the media and several lawmakers. In his speech on Jan. 6, Trump called out supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard at the U.S. Capitol.

The breach at the U.S. Capitol began before Trump had finished his speech at the rally, according to a timeline compiled by The Epoch Times. As the incident escalated, Trump continued his urge for peace and respect for law enforcement throughout the afternoon.

Following the incident, Trump condemned the “violence, lawlessness, and mayhem,” saying that those who “infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.”

“This is a very, very dangerous road to take with respect to the First Amendment, putting at risk any passionate political speaker,” David Schoen, one of Trump’s impeachment defense attorneys, previously said of the new round of efforts to impeachment Trump.

The Justice Department and FBI had also said that they had charged protesters who conspired to breach the U.S. Capitol days before the incident, a detail that challenges the argument put forward in many media reports that Trump’s speech on Jan. 6 was the impetus for the violence. Meanwhile, the pipe bombs that were planted at the RNC and DNC headquarters on Jan. 6 were believed to be placed there the night before the riots, law enforcement bodies have said.

This week, media outlets began speculating whether Trump had joined the social media website Gab after the account realdonaldtrump, which is the same handle as Trump’s Twitter account, posted a copy of the letter Trump’s lawyers wrote to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the House of Representatives’ lead impeachment manager.

Miller denied that the account is being used by the former president. Meanwhile, Gab said in a statement on Twitter that the account was “a mirror of POTUS’ tweets and statements that we’ve run “for years.”

“We’ve always been transparent about this and would obviously let people know if the President starts using it,” Andrew Torba said in a statement on Gab.

Source: Trump Mulling Whether to Launch Own Social Media Platform, Says Jason Miller

February 3, 2021February 3, 2021

Parler CEO John Matze Announces His Termination

Parler co-founder and CEO John Matze in Washington on June 11, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Parler CEO John Matze announced late Wednesday that he has been terminated as the company’s CEO.

Matze said that the Parler board on Jan. 29 decided to terminate his position, adding that he did not participate in the decision.

The Parler board is controlled by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer.

Matze said in a statement, “I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.

“Over the past few months, I’ve met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech, and my view of how the Parler site should be managed. For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation,” Matze added.

Epoch Times Photo — This illustration picture shows the social media application logo from Parler displayed on a smartphone with its website in the background in Arlington, Va., on July 2, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

“Over the past few weeks, I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands.”

Matze said that he plans on taking a few weeks off.

“After that, I’ll be looking for new opportunities where my technical acumen, vision, and the causes I am passionate about will be required and respected,” he said.

“I want to thank the Parler employees, the people on Parler, and Parler supporters for their tireless work and devotion to the company. They are an amazing group of diverse, hardworking, and talented individuals, and I have the utmost respect for them. Many of them have become my second family,” Matze added.

“I want to thank all the people of Parler that supported me and the platform. This has been the true American Dream: an idea from a living room to a company of considerable value. I’m not saying goodbye, just so long for now.”

In early January, Parler was removed from the Apple and Google‘s app stores over what the two big tech giants alleged was a lack of moderation by the platform of violent content posted by its users—a claim that Parler denies. Shortly after, Parler was taken offline by Amazon’s services due to what Amazon said was Parler’s “repeated violations” of Amazon’s terms of service.

This story is developing, please check back for updates.

Source: Parler CEO John Matze Announces His Termination

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021

First Amendment Rights Being Eroded by Technocrats: Director of Citizens for Free Speech

The increased censorship of people’s views expressed on social media by Big Tech companies has been part of an orchestrated attack on the First Amendment, Patrick Wood, director and founder of Citizens for Free Speech, told The Epoch Times.

Wood believes that there is an agenda behind the censorship. It would be almost statistically impossible to attack simultaneously all five elements of the First Amendment: freedom of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, Wood said in an interview for Epoch Times’ “Crossroads.”

All five of those “have been shattered to pieces in the last year and the attack had started actually before that probably five [or] six years ago,” Wood said, adding, “Free speech is hanging by a thread and the First Amendment is hanging by a thread.”

Wood said that it was unprecedented that three Big Tech companies in one day took down competitor Parler under the pretext of violating their policies, calling it collusion.

Apple and Google removed the social media platform Parler from their app stores, saying that the app would be suspended until they could moderate “egregious content.” Soon after, Amazon Web Services took the site down due to alleged violations.

Parler was taken down by those companies after civil unrest and acts of violence marred a largely peaceful protest at the Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6.

Free speech has been at the heart of all human and economic progress in the last 200-300 years, Wood said. “When you curtail free speech it becomes regressive to society; in other words, you’re going backwards when you start to censor it,” he added.

Wood compared censoring speech on the Internet to electronic book burning. Every Marxist or fascist revolution takes over or squashes media first because they need to control communications before they proceed with the rest of the revolution, Wood explained.

The people in the technocratic core of Big Tech believe that they must silence any narrative which disagrees with their narrative, Wood said. And it is not limited to conservatives, he explained, providing the example of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., founder of the Board of Children’s Health Defense, who was also silenced for criticizing vaccine safety even though Kennedy is a liberal.

“They don’t want to hear an alternative narrative so they are squashing free speech in the process of shutting other people up from contradicting their own narrative, Wood said.

When attacks on First Amendment rights started about five years ago, similar policies had been openly advocated at the World Economic Forum (WEF) as part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Wood explained.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution “is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres,” Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF, wrote on the organization’s website.

Schwab also proposed the concept of the Great Reset to transform the world economy from “shareholder capitalism” to “stakeholder capitalism” which will harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution “to address health and social challenges.”

But the Great Reset is “warmed over technocracy from the 1930s,” Wood said.

columbia university cancels classes — The campus of Columbia University in Manhattan in a file photograph. (Benjamin Chasteen/Epoch Times)

What is Technocracy?

Technocracy was a political-economic movement that started in the early 1930s at Columbia University in New York.

“Engineers and scientists at that time believed capitalism was dead and that they and only they had some kind of a mandate to create a brand new economic system that was a resource-based economic system that would control the entire economy,” Wood said.

The concept of technocracy assumes that price cannot be used to control the abundance of goods because it decreases with the increase of abundance. Therefore a scientific method of balancing production and distribution must be used, according to a 1937 edition of The Technocrat magazine.

“Technocracy will distribute by means of a certificate of distribution available to every citizen from birth to death,” The Technocrat magazine states.

The movement failed when the economy recovered after the Great Depression, but it was revived in the early 1970s and it began to mature, Wood said, adding that what he called a global elite had embraced the idea that controlling the world’s resources would allow them to control the world’s economy.

Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal arts professor at New York University, wrote for the Mises Institute that the planners of the Great Reset support driving ownership and control of the most important factors of production to those enrolled in stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholders “include the enterprise’s owners and shareholders, customers, suppliers, collaborators of any kind, as well as the government and society, including the communities in which the company operates or which may in any way be affected by it,” according to a WEF report (pdf).

“The productive activities of said stakeholders, meanwhile, would be guided by the directives of a coalition of governments under a unified mission and set of policies, in particular those expounded by the WEF itself,” Rectenwald wrote.

“While these corporate stakeholders would not necessarily be monopolies per se, the goal of the WEF is to vest as much control over production and distribution in these corporate stakeholders as possible, with the goal of eliminating producers whose products or processes are deemed either unnecessary or inimical to the globalists’ desiderata for ‘a fairer, greener future.’ Naturally, this would involve constraints on production and consumption and likewise an expanded role for governments in order to enforce such constraints,” Rectenwald wrote.

The technocracy idea was introduced to communist China in the 1970s by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the political scientist, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, and the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Wood said.

That caused a blending of the Chinese Communist Party and communism in general with “this technocratic system of social management, of total management of the economy and the people,” Wood explained.

“If you look deeper you see that there’s a group of people, a core of engineers and scientists, that are working to use high technology to capture the entire society, all of the people in it, and to control and engineer the economic system.”

Source: First Amendment Rights Being Eroded by Technocrats: Director of Citizens for Free Speech

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021

Parler CEO ‘Confident’ Platform Will Return by End of January

De-platformed social media website Parler may return by the end of January, coming after the site reappeared online after Amazon Web Services (AWS) took the site down due to alleged violations, according to Parler CEO John Matze.

“I’m confident that by the end of the month, we’ll be back up,” Matze told Fox News on Sunday night. The website reappeared online with a brief statement from Matze.

According to a WHOIS search, Parler appeared to register its domain with Epik web hosting, which also hosts Gab.

“Every day it changes wildly, but I feel confident now,” Matze said, according to the Fox News interview. “We’re making significant progress. When you go into Parler.com it doesn’t go into the void now, it hits a server, and it returns just one piece of information.”

Matze wrote in an update on the site that “now seems like the right time to remind you all—both lovers and haters—why we started this platform.”

“We believe privacy is paramount and free speech essential, especially on social media,” he remarked in his statement, dated Jan. 16. “Our aim has always been to provide a nonpartisan public square where individuals can enjoy and exercise their rights to both. We will resolve any challenge before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon. We will not let civil discourse perish!”

parler screenshot — A screenshot of Parler.com on Jan. 16, 2020. (Screenshot/Parler)

Matze told the broadcaster that he was able to recover Parler’s data from Amazon on Friday, Jan. 15, which is a key step in relaunching the platform. “Now we can actually rebuild Parler,” Matze explained. “It’s critically important.”

On Jan. 11, Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon Web Services, saying that the firm should reinstate its services while saying Amazon engaged in monopolistic practices. Amazon, in a responding court filing, said Parler violated its terms and services by not moderating threats of violence and other allegedly egregious content, although Parler has since claimed a representative with Amazon appeared to be only concerned about whether President Donald Trump joined the social media website after Twitter and other big tech companies banned his accounts.

The Epoch Times reached out to AWS for comment on Sunday.

Matze added to Fox on Sunday that posting his brief message was a “big milestone” in getting the platform back online.

“We’re going to be putting periodic updates there,” Matze said “We’re going to try to get an update out every day… so that people can stay up to date with the site.”

Other than Amazon, Google and Apple removed Parler’s app from the firms’ respective app programs.

The move to suspend both Parler and Trump from various big tech services drew condemnation from civil liberties groups and conservatives, who have argued that it represents a slippery slope into more censorship.

Parler, which describes itself as a “free speech” social media website, drew a number of Trump supporters and other conservatives, including senators and House representatives. Following Trump’s Twitter ban, the website became the No. 1 app on various app stores before it was taken down.

Source: Parler CEO ‘Confident’ Platform Will Return by End of January

January 10, 2021

Parler CEO ‘Prepared to Take Full Legal Action’ After Big Tech Companies Target Platform

Parler founder and CEO John Matze said his company is “prepared to take full legal action” after several big tech companies suspended the social media network from their services, according to an email.

John Matze, Parler’s founder, told The Epoch Times in an email that he believes Apple, Google, and Amazon had acted in bad faith and that the social media platform is considering legal action.

Responding to accusations that Parler was enabling “threats of violence and illegal activity,” Matze said these companies are using recent events to “go after Parler,” even though “there is no evidence Parler was used to coordinate the events.”

“Parler has no groups-style feature and Facebook was the number one tool for coordinating meetups for that event,” Matze said.

The targeted moderation by these companies against Parler came after civil unrest and acts of violence marred a largely peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. A group of rioters and a minority of protesters waving American and Trump flags illegally stormed the Capitol building as lawmakers were counting electoral votes in a joint session of Congress. The mayhem on the day left five people dead, including one police office, and dozens of officers injured.

In response to the Capitol breach, a number of Silicon Valley technology companies ramped up their policing of statements and comments from President Donald Trump, conservatives, and other voices they believe may cause harm. Twitter on Friday permanently removed Trump’s account on its platform and justified its censorship by saying that the president had violated its “Glorification of Violence Policy” after he posted a message urging protesters to remain peaceful and leave the Capitol. The Trump campaign Twitter account has also been removed.

Parler, which has attracted a large following of classical liberal and conservative-leaning users, appeared to have been targeted for lacking a system to “implement robust moderation for egregious content.”

Apple said in a statement to media outlets on Saturday that they believe Paler had “not taken adequate measures to address” the proliferation of “threats of violence and illegal activity.”

“We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues,” the statement said.

Apple did not respond to The Epoch Times’ questions about the ban.

Similarly, Amazon told Parler that they would be shutting Parler’s servers at midnight Sunday, Jan. 10, over what it says is the platform’s alleged lax approach to violent content posted by its users. Parler disputes this claim.

Amazon also did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ questions about their suspension.

Matze said he believes these companies are also operating with a double standard.

“Twitter let ‘Hang Mike Pence’ trend the same day Parler was banned from Google … the double standard is obvious,” he said.

The big tech suspension came after Parler rose to become the number one application in Apple’s app store on Saturday, following Twitter’s suspension of Trump’s personal account. Matze said his social media network had around 20 million accounts at the time the companies suspended them.

Mobile app analytics company Sensor Tower told The Wrap in a statement that Parler saw approximately 182,000 first-time downloads in the United States on Jan. 8, which is up 355 percent on Jan. 7. The app saw about 268,000 installs across U.S. app stores since Jan. 6, the statement said.

Matze said on his Parler account late Saturday that he believes Amazon, Google, and Apple coordinated to “try and ensure they don’t have competition.”

“They will NOT win! We are the worlds last hope for free speech and free information,” he said.

“This is a battle against all of us. Liberals, conservatives, atheists, Christians, black, white, etc. They want to keep their monopoly over speech. They want us fighting. They don’t want us working together. They don’t want us working with each other, they want us hating one another.”

Unbalanced policing of user content and certain political views has raised concerns over First Amendment rights and the lack of checks and balances on decisions made by big tech companies. Discussions over limiting or eliminating liability protections under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act for tech companies that have engaged in censoring or political conduct have been heavily discussed in the past year.

Twitter’s move to remove Trump’s account has received widespread scrutiny. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, State Secretary Mike Pompeo, and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley likened Twitter’s move to conduct by the communist party ruling China.

Source: Parler CEO ‘Prepared to Take Full Legal Action’ After Big Tech Companies Target Platform