Normally I do not base posts on single tweets, but this account by HealthRanger (hat tip Chuck L) on coming intensified censorship of what is deemed to anti-Israel information is credible.
HealthRanger is a tech-adjacent business operator. His account has over 300,000 followers, and is very much anti-genocide/anti-Zionist. He was quickly critical of Trump’s Zionist cabinet appointments, for instance. I have only skimmed some of his older posts. He was also opposed to the Covid vaccines, but does not appear to have kept harping on that topic as many diehards do. But being on that side of the issue has made him very much aware of the messaging control during the “get everyone vaxxed” era. Admittedly, he has some tweets on nasty, coming-to-your-theater-soon war tech that seem a bit woo woo. But that does not bear on him picking up on chatter regarding censorship plans.
Truth is famously the first casualty of war. It seems a no-brainer that an effort to limit negative information about how Israel is faring and criticism of Israel generally is a given if the US formally joins Israel in attacking Iran, as opposed to continuing to try to have it both ways by merely being a too-visible partner but not the front guy. So even if Health Ranger’s sources are wrong on the fine points, it seems hard to imagine that something like the censorship program he outlines is not in the works. Look at what we’ve seen already on campuses.
We saw from the Twitter files that the Biden Administration, for the most part, relied on getting social media platforms to accept the premise that barring “misinformation” was entirely valid, and would use that to often politely but sometimes not, press for certain content to be removed and authors penalized or banned. Facebook and Twitter also have the ability to promote and muffle content, and that was a softer censorship measures, simply dampening the visibility of disfavored-speak.
It seems very unlikely that the Trumpies would go the soft-gloved route. But that also means the fingerprints of First Amendment violations would be far easier to see….assuming, of course, that one could get judges to react on a fast enough turnaround.
This coming crackdown also confirms our conservative policy of always running on our own hardware and avoiding using Twitter meaningfully and Facebook at all. As we’ve long said, “If your business depends on a platform, you don’t have a business.”
One can assume, as with the Covid speech clampdown, that the focus will be on social media, as in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tik-Tok. Needless to say, we are about to see how hypocritical Team Trump’s free speech posturing was, and how Musk’s free speech absolutism pretenses will go out the window.
We’ll see how this rolls out, but I would anticipate that high profile YouTubers and podcasters will be first on the hit list.
The interesting question will be Substack. Substack has made a lot of noise not just about being a free speech space, but also being willing to litigate on behalf of its writers. Will they fall in with content-choking? Demands to unplatform certain writers? Or will they put up a fight?
Now to the tweet from Health Ranger. For convenience, I am embedding it (which only displays an opening portion) and the body below.
🚨 RED ALERT: WE ARE GOING INTO A MAJOR WAR AND THERE WILL BE EXTREME CENSORSHIP under a new Office of War Information (OWI for 2025) org! (But not named OWI.) Following my previous post on this subject, I received confirmation that the White House is indeed working up a social…
— HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) June 18, 2025
The full text:
RED ALERT: WE ARE GOING INTO A MAJOR WAR AND THERE WILL BE EXTREME CENSORSHIP under a new Office of War Information (OWI for 2025) org! (But not named OWI.) Following my previous post on this subject, I received confirmation that the White House is indeed working up a social media BAN LIST, and they will be rolling it out within days after the bunker buster bombs fall on Iran. The goal of course is to silence all dissent and control the narrative to be 100% pro Israel. But unlike the way the Democrats achieved this by routing ban lists through the DoD and offshore NGOs then back to Big Tech, in this case the bans will be handled domestically under the US Department of State, citing “national security” as the reason. I’m told there will be many THOUSANDS of accounts banned across all major social media, and lists have already been largely compiled. Rubio will have the list, and it’s not a coincidence that Rubio is also currently serving as the National Security Advisor, meaning he has the access channels to push a censorship list through. No word yet on whether web domains will be seized by State, but it seems possible.
SHARE THIS widely, and push back against right-wing censorship in the name of protecting Israel’s narrative. Every indy media journalist should loudly protest this, and we should demand that Trump denounce censorship and back away from this plan! Benz should soon be aware of this, and Jones, Carlson and others, if they aren’t already. Owen Shroyer, Harrison Smith, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano, Glenn Greenwald, etc., will of course all be on the list, as will anyone with any significant reach who questions the pro-war narrative. YouTube will also be heavily pressured.
This isn’t the first time our government will have engaged in widespread wartime censorship, of course. From EBSCO: “U.S. Censorship and War Propaganda During World War II – During World War II, the United States implemented significant censorship and propaganda efforts to support its war objectives. As the conflict escalated, President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the need for organized propaganda and established various agencies, including the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Office of Censorship. These agencies aimed to disseminate information that bolstered public support for the war while suppressing dissenting views. Propaganda was delivered through an array of media, including films, posters, radio broadcasts, and comics, effectively mobilizing the American public and promoting wartime values. Iconic symbols, such as Rosie the Riveter, emerged to represent women’s contributions to the workforce while promoting a unified national effort. The OWI coordinated numerous campaigns to encourage military enlistment and the purchase of war bonds, as well as to promote resource conservation on the home front. Simultaneously, the Office of Censorship worked to prevent sensitive information from reaching enemy forces, leading to a complex relationship between government oversight and media freedom. Overall, this dual approach of propaganda and censorship was crucial in maintaining morale and commitment during a pivotal moment in U.S. history.”
Pray for freedom, pray for peace and pray for liberty. It seems the tyranny has merely shifted from the Left to the Right, but it’s still tyranny and it’s still extreme censorship. The Left censored under the label of “misinformation” and the Right will censor under the label of “anti-Semitism.” It will be labeled anti-Semitic to oppose war, in other words. If you don’t agree to bleed for the Zionists, you will be silenced. Decentralize rapidly. Shift to decentralized, independent platforms. I don’t know if Rumble will obey State Dept. censorship demands, as Rumble has been very strong defending free speech so far, so we’ll see. Torba will absolutely NOT give in to censorship demands. Bitchute will likely defend free speech as well. Brighteon will remain fully in accordance with the First Amendment (I am the founder of Brighteon), recognizing that dissenting speech plays a critical role in the very process of democracy. Bastyon is already decentralized and will remain so (censorship is impossible there). Watch for extreme censorship of popular podcasts via the podcast sites such as the “bean” site and Spotify, too. This is going to get far more insane and ugly than any level of censorship during COVID, fyi.
Is it time to start publishing Naked Capitalism on paper? The samizdat-times are-a-coming
We’re too small and not enough social media platform dependent to be worth the bother. We’re not, say, Scott Ritter or Max Blumenthal, who get a lot of traffic and profile from YouTube and podcasts, which are easy to choke. We don’t have either the reach or the social media platform dependence for us to rate.
The censors will hope, emulating the Covid censorship and even more the ICE raid strategy, that by making some big, high profile shows of force, that pretty much everyone else will self-censor. There was plenty of that in the “get vaxxed” era.
Speaking of Scott Ritter …
He famously gets excited in interviews but while appearing with Judge Napolitano, Ania K and people like that he usually tries to maintain an appropriate level of decorum. On his own show(s), however, he allows himself rather more latitude. Last night (17 June) on ‘Ask the Inspector’ (episode 272), he completely blows up three or four times. If you want to see the man pulling out all the salty-Marine stops, check it out.
If others are banned, it may increase NC’s traffic. I don’t know if it would reach alert levels.
When the main stream media can’t get rid of you vis a vis censoring, they Russell Brand you with an ire iron.
Russell Brand caved and went full on born again Christian Zionist, full emersion baptised in the Thames by some big name ditto, even went to pay grovelling homage to Israel and yet is still persona non grata among the powers that be.
Hopefully NC will fly on below the radar. If it does come, would mirror sites help? We readers could get VPNs which may help us access (say if NC was banned in the usa for example). Perhaps more frequent emails of top stories from NC (currently sent monthly to past donors (thanks!))
Please tell me what you think “banned in the USA” means. Operationally.
It is beginning to look as if the decision you made to remove yourself from the jurisdiction of the United States has been the smartest thing you have done in a long time. (I hope that Lambert has kept his “rat line” to Fredericton open.)
Stay safe.
Getting out of New York before it was slammed in the first year of the Covid pandemic made me wonder if Yves was psychic perhaps.
My guess (and I’m no expert):
1) Shutting down/silencing your domain name through ICANN (which I think is still controlled by the US or US-based entities).
2) Silencing your major sources that use US-controlled URLs.
3) Ditto the commentariat, as I’m guessing they could well have a list of both handles and emails (many of the emails are Gmail addresses).
4) Interfering with payment methods.
I most definitely hope I’m uninformed and wrong.
They are not going after small fry unless the small fry engages in extreme behavior they can shout from the rooftops.
The Trump Administration is extremely short staffed and disorganized thanks to DOGE. They have hardly anyone to move initiatives forward in a concerted manner.
Operationally that could be lists of domains that do not resolve any longer to IPs. Enforcement is done via the ISPs DNS servers and other DNS servers higher up. That’s how it is done here in the EU for Russian media and gov sites. (And why I use outside EU dns servers to broaden my view). Of course there is always a way around it, but 90% of users are not tech savvy enough and that is sufficient for censorship to work and have an impact. So I wouldn’t be too cosy with the idea that your own hosting protects you vs being on a platform. Just saying.
You don’t know where and how we are hosted. And we do have an extremely overqualified tech maven in Dave. We were prepared for precisely that sort of attempt when we posted our private equity limited partnership agreements back in 2014 and so know our options and have alternatives set up.
It would be easy to use a VPN and still read NC.
Have you seen the 2minute AD that is running on YouTube before every video I try to watch? Specifically before Judge Nap, Danny HaiPhong, Chris Hedges, Dialogue Works, etc.
It’s an AD for Operation Rising Lion, narrated by Netanyahu himself. It’s mind-boggling that a foreign country, which has started a war, is advertising that war in the US. Unreal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyOiuMRn_Mg
I was seeing IDF ads on YouTube after Oct 7th but not much since. I wonder if the Rising Lion ads signal that this isn’t just a short lived fight. Combined with this post and my own personal anecdote that sites like Reddit have begun cracking down on videos and pictures of Iranian military I’m concerned.
It’s gotta be a pretty big ad-buy. It’s 2min long and running all the time. I’ve never experienced advertisements promoting a war of another country’s making. Seems like it should be illegal?
I can’t imagine they would let Iran or Russia run ads like that.
Well when you think about it, Americans basically paid for it. The money for those adds likely came from AIPAC or some dummy corporation. And they got the money from Israel. But Israel doesn’t have the money in their budget for this because of the war so they are probably using some of the money that the US ships to Israel each and every year. So yeah, Americans basically paid for those adds. Your tax dollars at work.
Nope, the rest of the World paid for it, because that’s how empires work. US taxpayers are the ones complaining, because they are getting lesser cut than before when America was great. That’s why they fell for the Orange Man lies so easily.
Pamphleteers were all the rage in the late 18th century, here’s one from the Jacobins in 1792…
https://digitalcollections.libraries.ua.edu/digital/collection/u0002_0000006/id/7978/rec/1
I think I’ve a Gutenberg press in the chaos downstairs known as my basement ;)
I like the idea to use drones to spread pamphlets far and wide. Balloons too. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. In China back during the Mao turmoil era posters were put up everywhere, and on top of each other. Such low tech efforts can be effective. A form of guerilla warfare.
Drones are already in use for spreading pamphlets with the instructions to surrender in the Russian steppes, along the more traditional propaganda artillery shells/rockets. There are a few recorded success stories. Balloons are used in the Koreas, to send K-Pop northwards, and other crap southwards. How effective it is, remains to be seen.
I am thinking about the Creel Committee of the First World War and the slightly later Palmer Raids. It is not mentioned much, but the repression by the government was immense from 1917-21.
Needless to say, we are about to see how hypocritical Team Trump’s free speech posturing was, and how Musk’s free speech absolutism pretenses will go out the window.
Let’s keep that in front of our eyes.
War is the health of the state, Randolph Bourne. We are seeing how the state uses war to control its own citizenry: There are the crackdowns in Russia and Germany, the endless state of emergency in Iran and in Syria, the pressure on the citizenry in Turkey, the deterioration in England, and the evanescence of the Bill of Rights in the US of A. Yet the state lives on.
I see today that someone is circulating an article about Kamala Harris from 2024 — She’s Speaking about how Iran is a major enemy. A reminder of the delusions of the elites.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/10/08/is-iran-really-washingtons-greatest-adversary-00182908
The U.S. Uniparty is only too happy to censor.
If you have access to a concrete wall, or sidewalk, or a pillar supporting an overpass, and you have a piece of chalk and something to say, then you know what you must do. Say it.
Just took a look at Bastyon. Glad to know about it.
It’s a testament to the strength of the propaganda that crude oil is currently trading down 89 cents on early Wednesday morning east coast time. So much for market efficiency. Seems that the markets, like the press, take the official statements of the Israeli and US governments as true.
Also, as was likewise true in the gulf war propaganda about “Iraq has WMDs,” the New York Times is leading the “Israel is winning” Zionist propaganda effort in the press. This is problematic because much of the rest of the US press follows the lead of the NY Times or even simply reprints what the NY Times reports.
There’ll be an increasingly severe clampdown. Below is a particularly strident, stupid example of the line that TPTB in the West are selling, but it is the official line and as the real world increasingly breaks in on TPTB’s narrative in the coming months, they’ll increasingly regard it as an existential matter to suppress dissent.
Control of the skies: Israel achieves in 48 hours what Russia couldn’t in 3.5 years;
The two wars confirm what military planners have said for decades about the importance of air superiority.
https://www.jns.org/control-of-the-skies-israel-achieves-in-48-hours-what-russia-couldnt-in-3-5-years/
Israel announced that it had gained aerial superiority over western Iran, including Tehran, 48 hours after the start of “Operation Rising Lion,” something Russia hasn’t been able to do in three-and-a-half years of war in Ukraine.
Why one succeeded while the other failed was the subject of a report by The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The most obvious reason is that the Israel Air Force is more capable than the Russian Air Force.
British Air Marshal (ret.) Edward Stringer, who oversaw the air campaign in Libya in 2011 and headed operations for the British Ministry of Defense, told the WSJ that the key reason the IAF succeeded is that it surpasses Russia’s in culture, training and innovation, while combining intelligence and cyber capabilities.
“All the Russians have is pilots. They grow these pilots to drive flying artillery, and that’s it,” he said.
Honestly, do these people even listen to what they are saying?
Honestly, do these people even listen to what they are saying?
Only to compete in making more extreme, unreal claims.
The point of these statements is to no small extent that they are an ideological litmus test of individuals’ fealty to the Party line, as Orwell suggested in 1984, IIRC. Hence, the more unreal the claim — the more detached from reality — the better, from that POV.
Lest we forget —
‘Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.’
— Hermann Goering
‘The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades.’
— Hermann Goering
Me: Things don’t change much….
It did however matter that Hitler did very much have an eye on sparing the German population the impairments of war as much as possible.
So according to estimates (if I remember correctly) 70% of German industry/consumption was not under war restrictions. Unlike USSR, GB, USA which were all in true war economy modus.
Which incidentally was one of the reasons for losing the war.
But Hitler and the leadership knowing darn well that the system was unstable – (Himmler most likely knew about Valkyrie and all parties were in secret contact with the Allies in some way behind each others´ backs) – needed to make sure the people wouldn´t be too upset.
So matter of fact the war was an easy sell for Göring.
My guess is that this was one major reason for all coup attempts to fail.
E Mail trees?
Ha. I’ve been blocked on Substack since November of 23, for pointing out the logical fallacy of monotheism is that ideals are not absolute.
The core codes, creeds, heroes, narratives of any culture are ideals. The universal, on the other hand, is the elemental, so a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement from which we fell. The light shining through the film than the stories playing on it.
Basically the evolution of the Old to the New Testament was because humanity had to move from tribal cultures, eventually to nation states, as interaction between groups exceeded survival in nature as the primary defining feature of society.
Basically the Zionist are re-litigating the conflict the Maccabees had with the Romans.
Medium is still somewhat open but my stats dropped over the same essay.
I have mixed feelings about monoteism. On one hand, religions can give solace, hope, inspiration but sucks as oracle or moral arbiter, or, God(s) forbid, guide for decisions on war and peace. So the question is what sucks more.
Relativism stemming from polytheism gave rise to different philosophical schools offering ethic and or social principles, guiding not dictating humans, and nothing better can be achieved. Now we are supposed to formulate foreign policy by interpreting verses of Old and New Testament to arrive at ??? Judeo-Christian consensus or rejection of the concept? Monotheism at its worse, close to “Kill them all, trust the Lord to find his own (and shuttle to Paradise]”.
But on the religion defense side, this is very crappy theology.
Last word: I think there were no Maccabees by the time of conflicts with Romans, as rulers they were supplanted by Hasmodeans, who in turn prospered (when they did) by ingratiating and bribing at Roman imperial court etc. That model is alive…
More censorship has always been the aim. And that First Amendment has simply got to go. It belongs in a time of powdered wigs and horse drawn carriages. Fortunately they have discovered a way to Swiss-cheese that Amendment. Israel. Or rather, any criticism of Israel. It’s a perfect vehicle to nullify that Amendment. You say that you have free speech and can criticize and country that you want. But if you do it to Israel then that makes you antisemitic and you don’t want to be called that. And by letting that pass, without realizing it you have weakened what is left of the First Amendment. The Second Amendment can stay as when you think about it, you will run out of bullets before you run out of arguments criticizing the government’s action.
The problem they will find is the doctrine didn’t have time to stabilize, before the narrative had to change, so sufficient numbers of people don’t follow the script.
The reaction to the liberal woke culture, that was basically stagnant 60’s, 70’s radicalism, didn’t have time to effectively gel, before Trump switched his “hope and change” act and pulled an Obama. “Foaming the runway” with the Maga muffins to save the Zionists.
I’ve thought about it many times and in an inverse way, the 1st amendment is more powerful today then it was 250 years ago. Back then, everything was written and had to be read on paper. The unwashed masses did not often have the time or the will to read all these papers and pamphlets. So, the discourse was really not all over the place as it is today.
Today, the unwashed masses have the time and the will (and the smartphones) to be on TicToc, Utube, Reddit, X, Facebook, MySpace, Geocities, NC, etc. So, competing viewpoints have the ability to get in front of everyone quickly and spread out with the touch of a button. Not the printing of the press on paper, where it was one copy at a time.
What you say has merit, but there is a downside to having too much information. None of it really sinks in because the noise factor is quite intense. In reality, people are less informed today than they were a few decades ago.
David Shenk wrote a book, “Data Smog”, that touches upon this:
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1000579M/Data_smog
“how hypocritical Team Trump’s free speech posturing was”
Add “free speech absolutist” Turley to the hypocrite list. When Trump and university administrators went after genocide protestors he was all for it. His pitch was only about censorship of conservatives (also bad to the truly principled).
One has long been tempted to suggest an Israelification of American society is taking place but the truth is that the Israeli model of repression is merely a test bed for authoritarians throughout the West not to mention places like India and Latin America. The problem for the authoritarians is that they now have a boob in the White House as their standard bearer with loons like Noem as his minions.
Bring on the No Kings.
Was it after Biden was elected that NK got listed with about 200 other sites as “Russian Influenced?” I’m sure your reach is bigger today, so it won’t be surprising if you get targeted again.
This was what amounted to a fluke. The “targeting” was done by a Ukraine Nazi group, PropOrNOt. This was the antithesis of elite-connected types, at least in the normal sense.
Its lame report got flogged by the Washington Post by one Craig Timberg, who has been pushed out of the prestigious national security reporting desk to technology reporting. Timberg managed to evade normal editorial review at the Post by getting through on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
I am told by a very well plugged in contact that the people on the national security desk were in a fury when they saw Timberg running an story that was embarrassing to them and he had no business posting (as in way outside his current beat) and tried to get Timberg fired. They even wrote a protest letter to the editor in chief.
The PropOrNot list and related story were so ridiculous that many MSM or MSM adjacent severely criticized it, among others the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review.
The really perverse bit was we had written pretty much nothing about the civil war in the Donbass, although we had more than once called Maidan a coup. Perhaps that came up in a web search? But the list was arbitrary. It included sites like Natural News and small leftie publications that wrote bupkis about geopolitics.
I join the voices concerned about your blog. NC is “ small” but is visible and noncompliant with the orthodox narrative. You are not Major but IMO influential enough to be worrisome to someone.
I expect you to be suppressed since it’s easy for “them” to do it, and the cost of false positives to TPTB is minimal
We weren’t during Covid.
By now it is obvious that Trump is more of the same. Yes but he’s a good fascist. In one of my songs they say: You say what you like because they like what you say.
X is also not a neutral or platform for free speech. Elon is just the same as everyone else, he’s a fake hero. Ever since 2022 the west has been glorifying violence, the key is against who. I’ve been silenced and banned many times by copying posts and replacing Russia/Iran with US/Israel/EU and Putin/… with Urusula/Trump/…
Or saying 9/11 was a great day. As European this mean 9 November, possible a birthday party. I have no problem with rules on private platforms, glorifying violence is valid but then it have to be neutral and for everyone.
The western empire is dying, foremost the EU, the more they lose their grip on reality the more authoritarian they will be.
OWI =>>> OWL
Who, Who?
And what happened to Minerva and wisdom?
I have been reading The Palestine Chronicle for several years with no problems. Starting recently I have often been unable to access that site. Today I managed to read one article. After that all I get is Safari unable to access, or simply no response at all.
The real question is what Epstein had on him.
Was it a dead girl, or a live boy.
Other than some performative strikes, it’s really unclear how long the US can maintain a “war” before severe logistical shortages occur. The US MICC is NOT the Cold War US MICC and cold war stocks (including Europe’s) were sent to Ukraine.
Will censorship continue after the US declares victory (with gas shortages and 200-dollar oil), ala the Houthi fracas? My SWAG is that the censorship is about controlling the narrative of the war’s economic fallout and resultant domestic unrest.
We have Amy Coney-Barrett to thank for this.
Her gutless evasion of the merits of Murthy v. Missouri resulted in a byzantine ruling that held only that the defendants lacked standing to sue the Biden Administration. Despite the plaintiffs clearly showing harm, and traceability to the government’s conduct courtesy of the Twitter files. ACB invented a new standard on the fly, as justices often do when they want to reach a goal-seeked outcome but lack the legal precedents and case law to support it.
Of course, the liberal justices who sided with her, probably because it was their team that was doing the censorship, are also to blame.
So now that the shoe is on the other foot, liberals can try suing the Trump administration, and maybe in a year or so, after an initial lower court ruling enjoining the Trump admin gets stayed and rattles around the system, ACB will get another crack at bat.
My X account has been suspended. I had a habit of posing questions like, “Do you believe Israeli children have more worth than Palestinian children?”, on an account of an Israeli spokesperson with thousands of pro-Israeli followers. Nobody answered my question.
Also, a new account was made, without my knowledge, showing my real name. What the hell!!!
HealthRanger just appeared on the Coffee and a Mike podcast. Just FYI. I’ve not yet had a chance to watch or listen:
https://rumble.com/v6uzsrv-war-as-the-cover-story-for-financial-collapse-mike-adams.html
https://youtu.be/uCvznboo6Ag?si=2ZxpXxtPVq1bb8cm