Weaponization of Politics, an American Tradition
By Ron Paul | June 26, 20234
President Donald Trump is hardly the first political figure who has had the legal and policy processes weaponized against him. In fact, there is a long and shameful history of US politicians and bureaucrats weaponizing governmental powers against their political opponents.
The First Amendment was not even a decade old when fear of influence on America by French agents was used to support the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. This outlawed “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the US government, Congress, or the president and made it illegal to conspire “to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States.”
The weaponization of politics is another example of how hysteria over alleged foreign threats leads to less liberty. The claim that opponents of US government policy were serving interests of France is an early example. Sadly, critics of US government policy have been smeared for spreading disinformation to benefit hostile foreign powers many times since.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln oversaw the shutting down of newspapers and even the arresting of state legislators. After the US became involved in World War I, Congress passed a new Sedition Act banning “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” toward the military or US government. This act was used to imprison Eugene Debs, who then ran for president as the Socialist Party nominee while in prison.
Opponents of US involvement in World War II were accused by supporters of US military intervention of being a “fifth column” for Germany’s government. Later, opponents of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and other countries where the US intervened were subjected to government surveillance and harassment.
Critics of US foreign policy may be the first critics of the US government targeted for opposing government policies, but they are not the last. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover targeted the civil rights movement and wiretapped and harassed Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover also kept files on those he deemed subversives, including even the pop music group The Monkees.
Presidents of both parties have used the IRS against their political enemies. As an IRS agent told the head of a conservative organization who was being audited after calling for the impeachment of then-President Clinton, “What do you expect when you target the president?”
The drafters of the Constitution knew those with power would always be tempted to use the power against their opponents. Hence, they created a limited government where power was diffused and checked. Unfortunately, American politicians gave in to the temptation to weaponize the law against their opponents in the early days of the Republic.
Since then, the growth of government has led to the growth of an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy that plays an important role for the deep state. The deep state pursues its own agenda regardless of the wishes of the people. The deep state works to subvert those who oppose its agenda, using tactics up to and including assassination in the case of President Kennedy.
A lesson of this history is that people who desire liberty should not trust the US government to advance liberty. Instead, they need to be vigilant in ensuring the government acts within the limits stated in the Constitution. Making sure the government is pursuing a policy of peace and free trade abroad is also essential to promoting liberty at home.
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
Supporting US proxies not in Australia’s national interests
By Lucas Leiroz | June 27, 2023
Pro-Western countries continue to join the irresponsible wave of arming Ukraine. On June 26, the Australian government announced a new package of military aid to the Kiev regime, showing the country’s real willingness to follow NATO’s guidelines against Russia. The measure does not serve Australia’s actual interests but reflects the submissive status of the local government to Western partners.
“The Australian Government will provide a new $110 million assistance package to Ukraine (…) This package responds to Ukraine’s requests for vehicles and ammunition (…) In addition, Australia will extend duty-free access for goods imported from Ukraine for a further 12 months”, an Australian government’s statement reads.
The mentioned value of 110 million AUD is equivalent to around 74 million dollars. Among the equipment supplied, there are “70 military vehicles, including: 28 M113 armored vehicles, 14 special operations vehicles, 28 MAN 40M medium trucks and 14 trailers, and 105mm artillery ammunition”.
With this, Australian spending on aid to Ukraine amounts to 790 million dollars – US$ 610 million of which are specifically used for military assistance. While this spending is considerably less than that made by the US and other NATO’s powers, the numbers remain surprising given that, unlike its Western partners, Australia is not a key military power and has a smaller defense budget.
In fact, helping Ukraine is absolutely irrational for a country like Australia. Washington has a clear interest in attacking Russia, which shows the reasons for helping Kiev. In the same sense, although supporting the regime is not strategically beneficial for Europeans, these states can at least use as a “justification” some concern with the stability of continental security, fearing an “expansion” of the Russian operation.
But as far as Australia is concerned, there is no possible justification. The country has no reason to follow a foreign policy of aggression against Russia, nor is it geographically located on the Eurasian continent to fear that the conflict will physically affect it. Canberra is helping Kiev just because it is committed to Western geopolitical interests, even if these interests are not shared by the Australian people.
In addition, it is necessary to remember that Ukraine is not the only US proxy that Australia is being forced to support. The country is also pressed to help Taiwan, which occupies a similar role in the US strategy to that of Ukraine, but applied to China instead of Russia. Since the beginning of the year, American officials have encouraged Australia and neighboring state New Zealand to commit to defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict, which has also been reinforced recently by the Taiwanese government.
A day before the new package for Ukraine was announced, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu “reminded” the Australian government of the need to send a military attaché to Taipei. Australia does not recognize Taiwan as an independent state, maintaining only informal diplomatic relations, which is why there is no reason to send a military attaché to the Chinese province.
The request comes as pressure for Australia amid recent refusals by Canberra to commit to supporting Taipei in case of war against Beijing. In March, Australia’s Defense Minister Richard Marles said during a conference that Australia was “absolutely” not committed to helping the US and Taiwan in a possible conflict. Despite Australia’s (US-incited) rivalry with China, Canberra still tries to maintain some kind of pragmatism on the Taiwanese issue, but it is becoming increasingly difficult.
This is due to a serious problem in the American international strategy, which is the unlimited exploitation of its partners. Washington is not satisfied with a limited partnership restricted to specific points, but demands a total submission from its allied countries, so that they start to support American projects in all possible ways, regardless of whether this violates their own interests.
Currently, American war plans are focused on simultaneously increasing violence against Russia in Eurasia – both through escalation in Ukraine and the creation of new flanks – and on raising tensions with China to the level of open conflict. Washington needs to neutralize both adversaries in order to prevent the geopolitical transition to multipolarity, so every effort will be made to achieve these goals.
Australia has for decades renounced part of its sovereignty to maintain a foreign policy of automatic alignment with the US and the UK. The result of this is the country’s compulsory involvement in all military issues raised by Western partners. Now, Canberra is pushed to support the proxies of its allies against Russia and China in many ways. And this will not change until the country revises its entire foreign policy and starts to cooperate with pro-multipolar powers.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Leave Trump Alone (Because It Does Not Matter)
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 26, 2023
The narrative is set. Everything between now and November 2024, absent an actual alien intervention, is filler material.
Trump will ride his narrative to the polls, campaigning even if in hand cuffs and an ankle monitor. He is, he will make clear, the victim of a Democratic plot to weaponize “justice,” dating back to 2016 when Hillary was let off scot-free for her email shenanigans, followed by the FBI’s concocted Russiagate, two impeachments, and now a carousel of indictments. His opponent is Joe Biden, older than Yoda but presenting more like Jar Jar, crooked in cahoots with his scum bag son to hard suck bribe money out of eastern Europe. Sleepy Joe’s narrative is to count on the same FBI going after Trump with both barrels to shuffle its feet investigating him and Hunter through the election, with a final surge under the slogan “Oh who cares, I’m not Trump!” to wrap things up. It’s all a rich tapestry.
The problem is it is compelling; there is a lot of truth underneath the showmanship. There was David Petraeus, Obama’s CIA Director, who leaked secret docs to his girlfriend, and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s NSA Director, who stole secret docs. But it was Hillary who did get away with it all, at the FBI’s discretion (so much for one law for everyone) what Trump has been accused of in Mar-a-Lago. Hillary Clinton maintained an unsecured private email server which processed classified material on a daily basis. Her server held at least 110 known messages containing classified information, including e-mail chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level, the highest level of civilian classification. The FBI found classified intelligence improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s server “was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign governments or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means.”
Clinton and her team destroyed tens of thousands of emails, evidence, as well as physical phones and Blackberries which potentially held evidence — obstruction as clear as it comes. She operated the server out of her home kitchen despite the presence of the Secret Service on property who failed to report it. A server in a closet is not as dramatic a visual as boxes of classified stored in a shower room, but justice is supposed to be blind. More recently, what of Mike Pence and Joe Biden, both of whom have escaped indictment so far on similar charges of mishandling classified information. Trump voters know if the FBI is going to take similar fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, it is partial and political. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.
The Stormy Daniels case, and the guilty finding in the Jean Carroll defamation case, reek of politics. Neither case would have seen daylight outside of Democratic hive New York, and neither could have held up outside a partisan justice system that permits it to ignore Jeffrey Epstein’s death in custody or a city in a crime tornado (New York in the past year reduced 52 percent of all felony charges to misdemeanors, opposite of what was done to Trump) while aggressively allowing the system to pursue a decades-old rape case of dubious propriety.
Witch hunt meet Hunter. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office on the promise to prosecute Trump. He fulfilled a campaign promise and paid off his George Soros-connected backers. Bragg, in the words of law professor Jonathan Turley, had a “very public, almost Hamlet-like process where he debated whether he could do this bootstrapping theory [bumping misdemeanors up to felonies in the Stormy case.] He stopped it for a while and was pressured to go forward with it. All of that smacks more of politics than prosecutorial discretion.”
Calling it all a witch hunt is just a starting point. The point here is not innocence; it is whether the justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, risking being seen as partial and political. No matter which candidate wins or loses, credibility is tanked.
Still to come (at the least) are whatever judicial actions will emerge from the Special Prosecutor over Trump’s role in January 6, and legal action over the 2020 Georgia vote count (with another Democratic openly anti-Trump prosecutor.) Trump jokes in his stump speech nowadays every time he flies over a Blue State he gets another subpoena. He could easily head into the Republican convention to accept the nomination with multiple convictions and/or indictments on his shoulders. It won’t matter. The justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore some while aggressively pursuing others, partial and political plain as day. No matter which candidate wins, credibility is tanked. It grinds that most of the serious charges against Trump are under the hoary Espionage Act, seen by many as reviving the now-discredited trope Trump was a Russian agent.
Mostly overlooked for now is how much of the apparent evidence against Trump at Mar-a-Lago came from his own attorneys. Attorney-client privilege is recognized as one of the cornerstones of fairness in our system. In the Trump case, the Justice Department used the one major exception to privilege, when the communication is intended to further a criminal or fraudulent act, to compel Trump’s lawyers to give evidence against their own client. Justice asserted Trump lied to his own team about having no more classified documents, and that this constituted a crime of fraud and maybe obstruction, and thus privilege is not available and Trump’s lawyer can be made to testify against his client. The crime or fraud exception to attorney-client privilege itself has a long history, dating back to English common law. In the United States, the crime or fraud exception was first recognized by the Supreme Court in the 1840 case of United States v. Privileged Communications. But Trump’s supporters are unlikely to read deeply into the case law; all they’ll see is what looks like strong-arm tactics by the Department of Justice. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.
The thing is no one has to work very hard to convince Trump supporters of the truth of what he is saying, that he is the victim. Trump support remained unmoved by the many investigations that plagued his presidency. Even during peak crises, views of him were static. Post-presidency polls continued the trend. Public opinion of Trump remains remarkably stable, despite his unprecedented legal challenges, and about half of Americans do not see his behavior as disqualifying, sharper if you divide along partisan lines. When asked if Trump’s legal troubles would impact their views of him, two-thirds of his supporters said it would not make a difference. That’s a committed bunch. Perhaps just as important, 57 percent of voters, including one-third of Democrats, said the indictment in New York earlier this year was politically motivated.
No one can say who will win in November 2024, but one loser is certain, faith in the rule of law by a large number of Americans. They will leave the polls certain the system was bent to “get” Trump, either saddened by the fall of blind justice or saddened that it did not work and Trump remined a powerful figure with a large movement behind him, either in or out of the Oval Office.
mRNA: Vaccine or Gene Therapy? The Safety Regulatory Issues
Dr. Helene Banoun Elucidates the History of Misguided Use of Genetic Code for Vaccination
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 26, 2023
I have been impressed with the quality of scholarship from independent academic researchers during the pandemic. During this time there has been a silence from academia in terms of any viewpoints that deviate from the mainstream scientific narrative. Dr. Helene Banoun is an independent researcher, former research fellow at INSERM (French Institute for Health and Medical Research), Marseille, France. She has published several very important review papers during the crisis.
Dr. Banoun has recently published an analysis on the mRNA vaccines in consideration of definitions and regulations that apply to gene therapy. For most people vaccinated, it was the first time they had been injected synthetic genetic code for a potentially lethal foreign protein (Wuhan Spike protein). A perfectly compliant American who started the COVID-19 vaccination program on time is on their seventh mRNA injection—an astonishing observation given the lack of any safety information concerning the cumulative effect of frequent, serial administrations. Banoun makes the case that they should be classified as gene therapy products. I have heard no counter arguments to the contrary.
Banoun, H. mRNA: Vaccine or Gene Therapy? The Safety Regulatory Issues. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2023, 24, 10514. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms241310514
Banoun goes on to state: “The wide and persistent biodistribution of mRNAs and their protein products, incompletely studied due to their classification as vaccines, raises safety issues. Post-marketing studies have shown that mRNA passes into breast milk and could have adverse effects on breast-fed babies. Long-term expression, integration into the genome, transmission to the germline, passage into sperm, embryo/fetal and perinatal toxicity, genotoxicity and tumorigenicity should be studied in light of the adverse events reported in pharmacovigilance databases.”
This is important for discussants and litigators to have this predicate. Genetic vaccines are gene therapy products, all the regulations, laws, and safety protections should be called for and pointed out when missing in the discussion on the next steps to be taken on mRNA genetic vaccines.
Wind costs will remain high
By Gordon Hughes | Net Zero Watch | June 26, 2023
The crash in Siemens Energy’s share price on Friday has admirably highlighted an issue with wind costs that colleagues and I have been examining for more than a decade. The painful facts are that (i) wind generation, both onshore and offshore, is more expensive than we are being told and (ii) the performance of wind turbines tends to deteriorate with age, in significant part because of the kind of failures reported by Siemens Energy. There is strong evidence to support these conclusions, which has been presented in reports published by the Renewable Energy Foundation in 2012 and in 2020 for the UK and Denmark, with updates provided by the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch.
The news about Siemens Energy brings a strong inclination to say ‘you were warned’. However, their travails are a symptom of a much more widespread disease, which affects all of us, either directly through the costs of electricity or indirectly as the owners of wind farms (via pension funds and other investment vehicles). The plunge in the share price of Siemens Energy is dramatic, but that may be written off as a temporary market response to disappointed expectations. We need to look beneath the immediate story to understand the reasons for the disappointment and their implications for the prospects for wind generation.
The announcement by Siemens Energy focused on higher-than-expected failure rates for their onshore turbines. These were ascribed to problems with key components, but newspaper reports suggest more systematic design faults in recent generations of large turbines. Previous announcements have referred to problems with offshore turbines, and the market reaction suggests few believe that the current problems are confined to onshore turbines. Further, while each of the major turbine manufacturers has its own specific problems, Siemens Energy is not unique in experiencing high warranty costs due to higher than anticipated failure rates.
In increasing order of importance, there are three aspects to note:
(a) Siemens Energy and other manufacturers have given warranties on performance that won’t be met because of higher failure rates. They will incur additional expenses, either to replace components or to compensate wind farm operators for any resulting underperformance. Those costs are the basis for the write-offs that Siemens Energy has had to take. Investors will be painfully aware that the company has been declaring profits when they sell wind turbines, but without making adequate provision for future warranty repair costs.
In accounting terms this is known as recognising future profits for new contracts. When it becomes clear that the contracts will be less profitable, the company must write down the value of previously reported profits and, thus, the value of the assets on its balance sheet. In effect, though perhaps entirely innocently, the company has been misleading investors about its past and current profitability. Senior managers should be feeling very uncomfortable about their positions since the problem was predictable (and predicted).
(b) Warranties have a limited period – often 5 to 8 years – but the higher failure rates will persist and affect performance over the remainder of the life of the wind farms where the turbines have been installed. Their future opex costs will be higher than expected, and their output will be significantly lower. This will reduce their operational lifetimes, which are determined by how the margin between revenues and costs changes as wind farms get older. Lower revenues and higher costs bring forward the date at which replacement or repowering is necessary. These changes will reduce, often quite substantially, the returns earned by the financial investors – pension funds and other – to whom operators sell the majority of the equity in wind farms after a few years of operation.
(c) Siemens Energy and other manufacturers may argue that they can – with time – fix the component and design problems which lead to high failure rates. They may well be correct. The history of power engineering is littered with examples of new generations of equipment which experienced major problems when first introduced but which were eventually sorted out. Many companies have found themselves in severe financial difficulties or even forced into bankruptcy by these “teething” problems. The error in this case has been to pretend that wind turbines were immune to such failures.
The whole justification for the falling costs of wind generation rested on the assumption that much bigger turbines would produce more output at lower capex cost per megawatt, without the large costs of generational change. Now we have confirmation that such optimism is entirely unjustified – the whole development process has been a case of too far, too fast. Again, this was both predictable and predicted. The idea that wind turbines are immune to the factors that affect other types of power engineering was always absurd. The consequence is that both capital and operating costs for wind farms will not fall as rapidly as claimed and may not fall significantly at all. It follows that current energy policies in the UK, Europe and the United States are based on foundations of sand – naïve optimism reinforced by enthusiastic lobbying divorced from engineering reality.
In the longer term it is (b) and (c) that are the big story. With respect to (a), serious analysts have long since recognised that claims made about future wind costs and performance by the wind industry should not be taken seriously. It has been obvious that they were kidding themselves and their investors ever since the last 2010s. Unfortunately, we have now been tied into a high energy-cost future, with all the implications that has for the economy and standards of living.
Sweden just scrapped their “Renewable Energy Targets”. Here’s why.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 26, 2023
Buried behind the news of the supposed “attempted coup” in Russia this weekend, was the Swedish government’s announcement, last Wednesday, that they will be stepping back from their plans to go 100% renewable energy.
According to finance minister Elisabeth Svantesson, wind and solar power are simply not efficient or reliable enough to be trusted to produce the entire country’s energy supply.
This has been celebrated in some circles as an example of a government taking a logical approach.
But, to be clear, this is not about refuting or rejecting the “climate change” agenda, but purely a question of methodology. Sweden is rejecting “renewable energy” goals, not net zero. Net zero is still very much on the cards… via nuclear power, what some still laughably call “clean energy”.
According to Euractive.com :
Sweden’s parliament on Tuesday (20 June) adopted a new energy target, giving the right-wing government the green light to push forward with plans to build new nuclear plants in a country that voted 40 years ago to phase out atomic power. Changing the target to “100% fossil-free” electricity, from “100% renewable” is key to the government’s plan to […] reach net zero emissions by 2045.”
Sweden has always been at the fore-front of climate messaging, introducing one of the first ever “Carbon Taxes” as early as 1991.
It’s also the case that Sweden recently approved a feasibility study for a massive carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant near Stockholm. CCS is among the bigger scams of the climate change narrative.
And yet this scrapping of renewable goals has been welcomed by some in the alternative sphere as Sweden “seeing sense”.
This is highly reminiscent of Sweden’s role in the Covid narrative – the “voice of reason”. The sensible rejection of the official narrative in favour of a very slightly different version of the official narrative.
Sweden pushed for no lockdowns and “early treatment” and herd immunity, but all of that actually served to underline that there was an actual pandemic that needed dealing with. Reinforcing the official story through carefully orchestrated dissent.
It looks like Sweden is about to cast itself in the same part for the Climate play.
Moving forward, the debate will be about “net zero via renewables” vs “net zero via nuclear”, without ever questioning whether we need to go “net zero” at all, or if it’s even physically possible to do so.
DeSantis Says Would Resume Keystone XL Pipeline if Elected US President in 2024
Sputnik – 26.06.2023
WASHINGTON – Florida Governor and 2024 Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis said on Monday that he would resume work on the Keystone XL oil pipeline between the United States and Canada, in addition to permitting other pipeline projects, if he is elected to be the next US president.
“Hundred percent, yeah. It’s a no-brainer,” DeSantis said during remarks in Texas, when asked whether he plans to restart work on the project.
DeSantis pointed out that pipelines are the safest way to transport energy and pointed to the latest derailment of a train with tanker cars over the weekend in the US state of Montana.
DeSantis also said he plans to permit “a lot of pipelines,” noting that such a move would also be good for national security.
The Keystone pipeline system transports oil from Western Canada to refineries in the United States. The system currently has three phases of the project operational, but with the fourth, Keystone XL, was suspended by the Biden administration.
Keystone XL would run through the state of Montana, where US oil would be added to the system. President Joe Biden rescinded a construction permit for the pipeline granted by former President Donald Trump in 2019.
Last year, the Biden administration said it had no plans to restart the Keystone XL project even amid concerns about rising gas prices and volatility in the energy market.
Robert F Kennedy Jr. Calls CBDCs “Instruments of Control and Oppression”
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 26, 2023
In an interview with The New York Post, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democratic Party presidential candidate, took a deep dive into the topic of currency. He unfolded his candid views on Bitcoin, expressed trepidations over central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and rang the bell of caution around artificial intelligence (AI).
Kennedy plans to “support Bitcoin and the freedom to transact,” and enable individuals to wield command over “Bitcoin wallets, nodes, and passwords.” In his world, regulatory fetters would be whittled down to the bare essentials to curb money laundering.
Kennedy also locked horns with Biden’s proposed crypto tax, a formidable 30%, and sounded the alarm against CBDCs.
His argument on CBDCs was clear-cut – CBDCs, in his estimation, are “instruments of control and oppression, and are certain to be abused.” He’s not alone in this battle-cry; his rival from the Republican stables, Ron DeSantis, shares a kindred spirit.
His disquiet was not merely consigned to the domain of cryptocurrency; artificial intelligence was equally ensnared in his critical lens. Kennedy called for the global harnessing of AI, citing figures like Elon Musk, whose advocacy for free speech he commended. The omens, as he foresees, are grave – where AI’s formidable might could “control narratives, create illusions, surveil our activities to dictate our behaviors and enforce compliance, and ultimately enslave humanity.”
Facebook Trusts Former CIA Analyst To Manage Election Policies
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 26, 2023
Meta recently appointed Aaron Berman, an ex-CIA agent, to take charge of its Elections Policies. Berman, who previously led the misinformation team at the company during the 2020 elections, now occupies a prominent position with extensive oversight over elections-related content across the globe.
The move is part of the revolving door between the intelligence community and social media platforms.
Aaron Berman boasts a career that spans nearly two decades with the CIA, from March 2002 to July 2019, Breitbart reported. During his tenure, he wielded significant influence, assuming various roles including editing and writing for the President’s Daily Brief – a high-profile classified document prepared every morning for the President of the United States by the intelligence community. Besides this, he supervised numerous analysts and managed multimillion-dollar budgets. His wide-ranging duties also encompassed providing briefings to members of Congress and the National Security Council.
After his extensive tenure with the CIA, Berman joined Facebook in 2019. Here, he took on the role of Senior Product Policy Manager for “misinformation.” He was instrumental in constructing the misinformation policy team’s workforce in the US and implementing policies during what he refers to as “critical events.” Although Berman has not specified the nature of these events, his stint at Facebook’s misinformation department coincided with the period leading up to the 2020 election, which was marred by controversies such as suppression of voices and news outlets.
Now as the Head of Elections Policies, Berman has wide-ranging responsibilities, as described on his LinkedIn profile: “Leads a team responsible for elections-related content policies worldwide. Oversees policy development, advises senior executives, coordinates with teams on implementation via technical and human workflows, and represents Meta with external stakeholders. Puts policies into practice on key elections.”
Australia mulls ‘fake news’ fines for Big Tech
RT | June 26, 2023
Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook could be hit with substantial fines under new draft legislation from the Australian government to crack down on the spread of “misinformation” and fake news on their platforms, The Age reported.
Under the proposal put forth by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), social media companies will be required to keep records showing their efforts to curb the spread of such information online. Repeated failures to do so could see them facing fixed fines numbering in the millions of dollars.
“Mis- and disinformation sows division within the community, undermines trust and can threaten public safety,” Canberra’s communications minister Michelle Rowland said on Sunday. She added that “the Albanese government is committed to keeping Australians safe online.”
Under the government proposal, the ACMA would be entitled to impose a new “code” of practice on social media platforms that repeatedly demonstrate an inability to monitor the spread of fake news on their services. It would also establish an industry-wide ‘standard’ to force the removal of certain content, requiring more robust methods to identify misinformation and an increased use of fact-checkers.
Systemic breaches of the code would see a company liable to a maximum fine of AUS $2.75 million (US $1.83 million) or 2% of global turnover – whichever is higher. The maximum penalty for breaking an industry ‘standard’ would be AUS $6.88 million (US $4.6 million) or 5% of global turnover.
A hypothetical fine under the latter terms for Facebook’s parent company Meta would amount to around AUS $8 billion (US $5.35 million), The Age daily noted.
The EU imposed similar rules governing social-media content last year which also saw social media companies liable for fines linked to annual global turnover.
Under the proposed legislation the government in Canberra would not have a role in determining which content online constitutes “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Rowland stressed that the law is designed to “strike the right balance” between curbing fake news and protecting freedom of speech online.
The powers will also not apply to standalone pieces of content, official electoral information and professional news services. Google had previously removed around 3,000 videos uploaded to YouTube from Australia which spread what it referred to as dangerous or misleading information related to Covid-19.
The proposed legislation was published on Saturday and is currently out for public consultation, which Rowland said was an opportunity for Australians and social media companies to air any objections to it.
Democrats Call on YouTube To Bring Back Its Election Censorship Rules
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 26, 2023
A ripple of indignation surged through the Capitol this Thursday as some lawmakers pushed against YouTube and its parent colossus, Alphabet Inc. At the heart of the issue is the tech behemoth’s about-face on its election misinformation policy, a move that emerges as a tinderbox in the countdown to the presidential race next year.
The fury emanated from the news that YouTube has decided to slacken its policy reins, no longer acting as the all-mighty censor against videos questioning the the sanctity of the 2020 presidential elections. The revelation, made through an announcement from YouTube, was met with the usual complaints from four high-profile Democrats of the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee. Among the voices was that of Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D.-NJ) who, along with his cohorts, denounced YouTube’s maneuver and demanded the tech giant retract this new stance.
In a letter, the lawmakers articulated their dissent, stating, “While you claim that taking such action is ‘core to a functioning democratic society,’ we emphatically disagree.”
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
They lambasted the policy relaxation as perilous and branded it a dagger pointed at the heart of American democracy, pressing YouTube to review this “harmful policy decision.”
YouTube’s silent watch was palpable as a spokesperson offered no rejoinder to the avalanche of criticism.
Dissecting the June 2nd announcement, YouTube’s reversal appears to be rooted in an introspective contemplation of its policy’s past efficacy and consequences. After purging of tens of thousands of videos, and a whole election cycle within its purview, the platform seems to have had an awakening. Perhaps censoring stuff isn’t good after all, they suggest, hopefully realizing that they were the baddies all along.
They believe the policy, initially started as a bulwark against election denialism, might inadvertently muzzle political speech without significantly stymieing the risk of violence.
However, the democratic lawmakers rebuked YouTube’s newfound stance as perilous, asserting that content discrediting the legitimacy of recent elections has already wreaked havoc upon democracy.
Since when has free speech been antithetical to democracy?
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Still No End in Sight of the Murder and Mayhem Wrought by the 9/11 Culprits
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 17, 2016
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Fourth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
Back in 2006 all but a prescient few, such as Christopher Bollyn, perceived it as premature to try to identify and bring to justice the actual perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes. There was still some residue of confidence that responsible officials in government, law enforcement, media and the universities could and would respond in good faith to multiple revelations that great frauds had occurred in interpreting 9/11 for the public.
Accordingly, the main methodology of public intellectuals like Dr. Kevin Barrett or, for instance, Professors David Ray Griffin, Steven E. Jones, Peter Dale Scott, Graeme MacQueen, John McMurtry, Michael Keefer, Richard B. Lee, A.K. Dewdney, Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, and Michel Chossudovsky, was to marshal evidence demonstrating that the official narrative of 9/11 could not be true.
The marshaling of evidence was spurred on by observations coming from government insiders like Eckehardt Wertherbach, a former head of Germany’s intelligence service. In a meeting in Germany with Christopher Bollyn and Dr. Andreas von Bülow, Wertherbach pointed out that, “an attack of this magnitude and precision would have required years of planning. Such a sophisticated operation would require the fixed frame of a state intelligence organization, something not found in a loose group like the one led by the student Mohammed Atta in Hamburg.”
Andreas von Bülow was a German parliamentarian and Defense Ministry official. He confirmed this assessment in his book on the CIA and 9/11. In the text von Bülow remarked that the execution of the 9/11 plan “would have been unthinkable without backing from secret apparatuses of state and industry.” The author spoke of the “invented story of 19 Muslims working with Osama bin Laden in order the hide the truth” of the real perpetrators’ identity. … continue
Blog Roll
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- Zionist-controlled companies to surveil British citizens
- THE CHILDREN GAMBIT
- A note on comment posting at Alethonews
- Trump stalls over Iran strike plan, Iran holds all the aces
- Zelensky’s Ceasefire for Elections is Strategic Gambit, Not Democratic Move
- If Americans Knew
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- Israel’s Favorite American President
- Israel’s “Yellow Line” Is a Death Trap for Palestinians. We Drove Into It.
- Why Israel’s expanding occupation in Syria presents a critical legal test
- Gaza is not a natural disaster. It is the victim of genocide enabled by global inaction
- Netanyahu’s plan to “end” US aid to Israel is to give even more money under a different name
- Israel ceased firing on Gaza for just 15 days of the “ceasefire” – Not a ceasefire Day 130
- In Gaza, “rats run over our faces” – Not a ceasefire Day 129
- Israel-backed border guards, GHF-linked aid – Not a ceasefire Day 128
- No Tricks Zone
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- New Study Rebuts The Assumption That Anthropogenic CO2 Molecules Have ‘Special’ Properties
- Climate Scientist Who Predicted End Of “Heavy Frost And Snow” Now Refuses Media Inquiries
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Aletho News 