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Alex Jones, terms of service, and truth

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Terms of service. Did Alex Jones really violate these at four different places? Or did the Deep State use that an an exuse?

On August 6, 2018, the arbiters of Facebook, YouTube, Apple (iTunes), and Spotify canceled the accounts and content of InfoWars founder Alex Jones. They took these actions within a twelve-hour interval of time. Each of them accused Alex Jones of breaking their terms of service. No two of them gave the same particulars, and some gave no particulars at all. The timing of the bans raises an immediate suggestion of collusion among them. And the allegations each made against Alex Jones vary from the vague to the specious to the outright mendacious. Moreover, one could allege the same against other users whose accounts remain. And that, sportsfans, is what we call selective application of the rules. Absolutely no one who does that, can make a truth claim and expect anyone to accept it.

Alex Jones in detail

Alex Jones has, for many years, delivered his version of events that differs greatly from the conventional. Moreover, he uses a bombastic style that would make even Rush Limbaugh blush. This has already cost him one marriage and could cost him custody of his children. (Note: this DuckDuckGo search has multiple articles, mostly conventional, about the Alex Jones divorce. Take each with a grain of salt.)

In brief: Alex Jones identified the Deep State (though not by name) many years ago. In the Election of 2016 they made themselves obnoxiously and disgustingly obvious. Alex Jones knows this and identifies President Donald J. Trump as the only President he has ever trusted.

Sometimes he has reached conclusions that later observations seem to prove untenable. For instance, he charged that Navy SEALs planted the Boston Marathon bomb. Independent witnesses later identified the two chief suspects, Tamerian and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Alex Jones called them “classic patsies.” Police ran down both men separately, killing Tamerian and capturing Dzhokhar.

At other times Alex Jones has stated things others either don’t believe or don’t want to believe. His reaction to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., serves as the prize example. Everyone assumes Adam Lanza invaded the school with a gun and killed twenty pupils and six employees in cold blood. Everyone, that is, except Alex Jones—and others the public knows less well. Jones charges that no one died at Sandy Hook. He cites an FBI crime statistics report that does not reflect any deaths at Newtown on 14 December 2012. He also cites an apparent lack of emergency medical first response. The parents of six children are suing Jones for slander and defamation of character.

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The great Alex Jones purge

Now, Facebook, Apple (iTunes), Google (YouTube, etc.) and Spotify have ended the InfoWars accounts on their services. (Among other things, this action hides a YouTube video in which Alex Jones explained further his Sandy Hook theory.) As above, they all acted in the short interval of twelve hours. (The Twitter account is still active.)

https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/1026862375209783298

In fact, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained his position here.

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Every other firm involved charges that Alex Jones violated the terms of service. Beyond that, they cite few if any specific instances. Indeed Jack Dorsey (see above) got in a not-so-subtle dig at his competitors.

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Dorsey said in effect, “Like him or hate him, he has done nothing against our terms of service.” And he refused to ban someone just to make other people feel better. By saying that, Jack Dorsey accused each and every one of his competitors of doing that very thing.

(Aside: the Trump News Gazette accuses Dorsey of suppressing other American conservatives that might not have Alex Jones’ following.)

One commentator—Erick Erickson of RedState.com—suggests Alex Jones lost his accounts, or should have lost them, for suggesting that the Sandy Hook children still live, etc. But that is not the issue. None of the Big Four raise that specific concern. Alex Jones released a video a year and nine months ago about the Sandy Hook affair. If any of the Big Four were going to act for that reason, why didn’t they act then?

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Bill of attainder

In fact, many activists, and even a U.S. Representative (Ted Deutsch, D-Fla.), have openly called for his banning. When a United States Senator or Representative does that, he tries someone in the legislature. He might as well introduce a bill of attainder, or a bill to declare someone an outlaw. Someone needs to remind Congressman Deutsch of this key sentence in the Constitution:

No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 3. Look it up.

Let’s not forget, either, clear evidence of selective application of whatever standard the Big Four used. Take YouTube, for instance. They host this video

from a user claiming Alex Jones “destroyed my home.” They still host it, after taking down Jones’ channel and all his content. Why don’t they ban this obviously edited piece of slander?

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Or take Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). She has called for violence against her opponents. How’s that for “hate speech”? She also delivered this blasphemous message—in a church, yet.

Yet YouTube kept her account, while they and the other three ban or “shadow ban” Republican accounts. (A shadow ban is a suppression of an account in the internal search engine, site map, or crawling instructions. Every site carries a file called Robots.txt giving such instructions. The Big Four, and Twitter too, seem to have perfected the technique of making an account uncrawlable.) This gives a one-sided, therefore incomplete, view of the news.

Skittish MSM

The Mainstream Media have greeted the mass ban with something less than brazen breast beating or gloating. The New York Times, for one, published this piece from David French of National Review. He declares flatly that the Big Four set a bad precedent.

…no cause for worry, right? After all, this was an act of necessary public hygiene. A terrible human being who has no regard for truth or decency is finally getting what he deserves.

Would that it were that simple.

French took time here to excoriate the Southern Poverty Law Center, and cite a recent embarrassment on their part.

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Erick Erickson (see above) also objected to the “hate speech” meme that, he says, the Big Four used. He foresees abuse of that term to mean “anything an administrator does not like.”

All of them miss the point. And the point goes beyond the protest by Alex Jones and his managing editor, Paul Joseph Watson, of the mass ban. They charge that the Deep State blames InfoWars for the election of President Donald J. Trump. Now, say Jones and Watson, the Deep State wants to gimmick the federal midterm elections.

They can’t suppress a man having his own platform

They might in fact desire that result. But Alex Jones has his own platform. In fact he has his own subscription channel on Roku.com. (Roku.com already refused to remove their NRA-TV channel. They told critics, “If you don’t like it, don’t add it to your account!”) Since the Great Purge, users have downloaded his InfoWars app with a vengeance, to get his feed directly.

Activist David Hodges told people to set up accounts on gab.ai, an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. And as Erickson and French both point out, Jones can only gain followers. Worse yet for the Big Four, they will lose activity as people looking for the Alex Jones Show, look elsewhere.

Suppose Alex Jones is correct?

The real point of the new controversy is: suppose Alex Jones is, in fact, correct? Truth is an absolute defense against any charge of libel or slander. And with this mass ban, the Big Four have left no methods or agencies of proof. A court that refuses to examine evidence cannot make any sort of judgment, fair or unfair. It can only hand down a decree—a dogma to quote the original Greek word.

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Herewith, then, a full examination of the three controversies upon which Alex Jones has weighed.

Nine-eleven

The Attacks of September 11, 2001 provoked too many conspiracy theories to list. The Democratic Party and its allies weighed in first. They charged the U.S. government blew up the buildings to get headlines and justify a war for oil booty. (At first they charged no planes flew into any buildings, until too many witnesses came forward.) Arabs and radical Muslims charged Mossad did it to provoke sympathy for Israel. (Some people deny the Holocaust happened, and Facebook lets them post with impunity. But CNAV digresses.) Libertarians charged that “war is the health of the State.” Thus one must never believe we have any enemies but what we make. As regards 9/11, Ron Paul and others charged that the United States deserved every death on that day. For favoring Israel, and interfering in Arab affairs, 9/11 represented “blowback.”

Alex Jones suggests a materially different explanation. U.S. operatives did not take down the buildings. But they spirited several Saudi persons of interest out of the country in the days following. Jones cites Paul Sperry’s piece in The New York Post (17 April 2016) for corroboration. Paul Sperry has always kept away from extreme Leftist or even Libertarian politics. Sperry implicates the Saudi kingdom in assisting the nineteen assassins with funds even before the attack. If that sounds familiar, it should. The Obama administration similarly spirited a Saudi suspect out of the country after the Boston Marathon bombing.

One can almost expect the Obama administration to facilitate terror attacks against Americans. But why the Bush administration? For one reason above all: oil. The Bushes have heavy oil interests, and always have.

The Deep State

Jones suggests another set of parties with a motive: the Deep State. They would want war—but only a pretend war—to keep the people in line. “If you see something, say something.” But, see what? Some things, when you do say something about them, provoke the Deep State to say, “Shut up!” Or else, after Officer Barbrady of South Park fame,

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All right, people. Nothing to see here. Move on.

The Boston Marathon bombing

As above, Alex Jones initially doubted, even denied, that Tamerian or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing. Too many independent witnesses “made” the Brothers Tsarnaev, however. But what about that Saudi national whom the FBI abruptly “cleared” of involvement? Did the FBI act in haste? Or did they act under orders?

At first one might wonder why a Barack Obama would deliberately allow a terrorist attack on American soil. Recent events, and pronouncements by Obama, give the clue. He still wants to transform fundamentally the United States of America. That would include making Shari’a law the law of the land. Suppose, then, that Obama sought an excuse to say, “We must abandon certain practices that Muslims understandably find offensive? That he finds those practices offensive to him personally, is no coincidence.

The Sandy Hook Incident

Alex Jones made the most dangerous pronouncement yet as regards the Sandy Hook affair. He actually suggested the parents of the alleged victims were play-acting, and simulating their grief. That provoked the lawsuits against him. Possibly for courtroom tactical reasons, his attorney now says the court/jury should judge Alex Jones as a performance artist. The attorney is not necessarily making a truth claim. He is merely employing the rules of defense that Richard “Racehorse” Haynes invented:

You sue me, claiming my dog bit you. My defense is this:

  1. My dog doesn’t bite.

  2. Even if he did, I tied him up that night.

  3. I don’t believe you really got bitten.

  4. I don’t have a dog.

But Alex Jones has more evidence than merely suggesting the parents of the “dead” are lying. (CNAV will explain the quotes in a minute.) He has the FBI crime statistics report from 2012 for Newtown, Connecticut. That report does not reflect the casualties from Sandy Hook Elementary School. In contrast, a similar report for Aurora, Colorado did reflect the casualties from a mass shooting in a theater. Jones also alleges that emergency first responders did not respond in numbers consistent with twenty-six deaths. (James Tracy, of Florida Atlantic University, also questions the lack of EMT response.)

The gun control motive and false-flag pseudo-operations

Alex Jones suggested only one motive for the Newtown Incident: gun control. In this regard, the government laid on a false-flag pseudo-operation against the school. Someone singled out Adam Lanza, primed him, groomed him, and backed him up on the hit. That same someone then made sure to kill Adam Lanza at the scene. No trial—and no pre-trial discovery.

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This last spring, a mass shooting took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That incident has many hallmarks of a false-flag pseudo-operation. They include a series of drills on the very day of the shooting, and preceding it. And they include this tweet from Matt Musil of KHOU-TV, Houston, Texas.

Watch Alexa Miednik tell of walking and talking with Nikolas Cruz while gunshots rang out in the background. Watch her limn quote marks as she uses the word suspect to describe Cruz.

If it happened in Parkland, Florida, then it likely also happened in Newtown, Connecticut.

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But an even larger question remains.

What happened to the children?

Did they die or didn’t they?

Before you answer, ask yourselves: why didn’t officials let the parents view the bodies? Hear those officials describe their position:

One mother, Veronique Pozner, did view the remains of her son Noah, the youngest casualty. He had taken a shot to the jaw, and the shot had shattered his jaw and ruined his face. So she says. The Pozners were first to sue Alex Jones over these statements:

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  1. CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Veronique Pozner in a separate room and “matted in” the backdrop of rooms in their house.
  2. Officials never let the parents of any of the children see the bodies.

The problem for the plaintiffs: Alex Jones has corroboration. Fellowship of the Minds casts doubt on the veracity of Veronique Pozner. Indeed, reports give her name variously as Veronique Pozner, Veronique Haller, or Veronique de la Rosa.

Did a child die twice?

And how can one explain this anomaly? Did Noah Pozner die twice? We see him listed as a casualty of a shooting in Peshawar, Pakistan, about a year later. See here and here. The second link says the British Broadcasting Corporation admitted the discrepancy. A photo of a child victim of the Peshawar incident looks too much like that of Noah Pozner. But they refuse to investigate.

The obvious check on the two stories would be a comparison of photographs. But Leonard Pozner (Noah’s father) blocked their release. He did this by claiming copyright on all his son’s photographs.

This illustrates the most salient point of this affair. The Mainstream Media, and these Big Four social-media firms, have removed all methods or agencies of proof. And the authorities have collaborated in this act. As proof, consider: authorities demolished the Sandy Hook School ten months after the event. That constitutes destruction of evidence.

Consider also this scathing description of the conduct of Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II.

Yet the H. Wayne Carver who showed up to the December 15 press conference is an almost entirely different man, appearing apprehensive and uncertain, as if he is at a significant remove from the postmortem operation he had overseen. The multiple gaffes, discrepancies, and hedges in response to reporters’ astute questions suggest that he is either under coercion or an imposter. While the latter sounds untenable it would go a long way in explaining his sub-pedestrian grasp of medical procedures and terminology.

Controversy over “sealed” records

By now, so many people have sanitized the Internet that they have buried any objective account of the event. This surviving account shows that only Noah Pozner had an open casket. (That is, if that was he in the casket.) The relatives of one other child chose cremation. Other children had closed caskets. This account also calls into serious question the behavior of the “mourners.”

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This account, if one can believe it, states the town’s only undertaker saw to some funerals with open caskets, some with closed caskets, and several cremations.

As to whether the records are available, accounts differ. One account says they are. What, then, shall we make of this account? According to it, the parents asked authorities to seal those records. And Connecticut’s legislature passed such a law.

Either children died that day, or they did not die. Or perhaps some children died, and some didn’t. A body suffering the kind of injury Veronique Pozner described, might be unrecognizable. If any children didn’t die, what happened to them? Why the confusion on the death of Noah Pozner? Why a bill to seal the records?

By way of suggestion

Any challenge to the prevailing theory of an event, must offer an alternative. Sadly, all one can offer is conjecture. Even Alex Jones will not offer any conjecture of any kind. But one conjecture does suggest itself. According to it, the parents acted, not out of any venal or political motive, but out of sheer terror.

Tellingly, one of President Donald J. Trump’s strongest initiatives is a law-enforcement initiative. Specifically, he is acting against the sexual trafficking of children. Equally tellingly, you never read of Donald Trump’s pursuit of sexual traffickers of women and children in the Mainstream Media. Wikileaks has this FBI file on such matters, by way of example. WikiLeaks weighed in on Twitter and shared the link there:

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Which brings us to the horrifying conjecture, consistent with the above. Might someone have trafficked some or all of the child victims at Sandy Hook Elementary? If true, that would explain all the discrepancies: bizarre behavior, closed caskets, cremation, and lack of EMT response. Someone must investigate this possibility. To date, no one has.

Conclusion

Alex Jones might be monumentally careless in investigating the questions on which he has commented. He and his staff display none of the skill of a Sherlock Holmes.

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None of this justifies the selective application of “terms of service” we saw on August 6 in the mass ban of Alex Jones. If he has libeled or slandered anyone, that is for a court to decide. Court is where the question rests. We shall see whether Alex Jones gets a fair trial.

To be fair, a trial must examine all evidence. In a libel or slander action, that must include evidence of probable truth. The Big Four, taking their cue from the plaintiffs, seem to apply the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. Which means, the thing speaks for itself. The problem: if the thing does speak, it speaks incoherently and inconsistently.

On the other hand…

On the other hand we have the strong possibilities that:

  1. The Deep State let nearly three thousand people die, to justify a war against an opponent of theirs.
  2. The Deep State further let several other people die in Boston, Massachusetts, to promote further “social change.” That change would involve remaking American custom to Muslim liking.
  3. Some person or persons, perhaps having Deep State connections, trafficked as many as twenty small children. (And maybe shipped one of them all the way to Pakistan!) Then they staged a massacre to cover this kidnapping, and also to promote confiscation of private firearms.

Conjecture each of those statements may be. But any one of them, if true, would be a disgusting affair in its own right. Therefore the thing does not speak for itself.

And CNAV has this answer for Erick Erickson, who asked whether we could have “a little nuance” about the mass ban of Alex Jones. Nuance us no nuance, Mr. Erickson! Not at least until you have considered, and investigated, every possibility. Even the outlandish, when grave enough, deserves investigation until you can rule it out.

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.

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[…] is the kind of abuse up with which conservative Internet users have long put. The Alex Jones affair has brought this to an immediate head. This, in turn, compels us now to provide for […]

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