Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) recently got in touch with his inner mobster and threatened Elon Musk — the new owner of Twitter and the CEO of electric car company Tesla and space ventures company SpaceX. He told Musk, “Fix your companies” or “Congress will.” As part of this threat, Markey referred to an ongoing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into Tesla’s autopilot driving system and Twitter’s 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Markey has done more than make threats: He is one of a group of Democratic senators who wrote to the FTC urging an investigation into whether Musk’s actions as the new owner of Twitter violated the consent decree or consumer protection laws. Since FTC Chair Lina Khan wants to investigate as many businesses as possible, it is likely she will respond favorably to the senators’ letter.
President Biden has also endorsed an investigation into the role foreign investors played in financing Musk’s Twitter purchase. Biden may be concerned that Musk is not likely to ban tweets regarding Hunter Biden’s business deals.
Concerns that Musk would allow tweets containing information embarrassing (or worse) to the Biden administration point to the real reason many Democratic politicians and progressive writers and activists are attacking Musk. They support efforts to suppress conservative, libertarian, and other “non-woke” speech on social media. They view the prospect of a major platform refusing to silence those who dissent from the woke mob or the Democratic Party establishment as a threat to their power. Musk further angered the left by committing what, to many Democrats (and Liz Cheney), is the ultimate hate crime — allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter.
The threat against Musk shows the threat to liberty is not just from big tech; it is from the alliance between big tech and big government.
Some conservatives think that increasing government’s power over social media is the correct way to make big tech respect free speech. However, increasing the US government’s power over social media can just end up putting more power behind government threats like those from Rep. Markey. Expanded government control over how social media companies conduct their business can also further incentivize the companies to work with the federal government to shut down free speech.
Once the government steps in with increased regulation, the risk is that greater government control over what is communicated on social media will follow. The question will just be who is calling the shots on the exercise of that control. Will the result be an increase of the liberal or “woke” pressure on social media companies to silence conservatives, libertarians, opponents of teaching critical race theory and transgenderism in schools, and those who question the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines? Alternatively, will a new sort of pressure become dominant, maybe pressure to comply with conservative or Republican preferred limits on speech? Either way, liberty loses.
Big tech companies silence their users to curry favor with politicians and bureaucrats, often after “encouragement” from politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, to end big tech’s censorship, Americans should demand that all government officials — including the president — not violate the First Amendment. We must work to put an end to government officials pressuring or even “encouraging” social media platforms either to silence any American citizen because of his opinions or to downplay or suppress any news story. The way to protect free speech online is to separate tech and state.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
November 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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Samizdat – 29.11.2022
The British government’s draft Online Safety Bill has previously come under fire from free speech campaigners and MPs — including current culture and media minister Michelle Donelan — for demanding social media sites censor posts which do not break any law.
The UK’s media minister has demanded Beijing grant British journalists freedom of speech — while suppressing it at home.
But her department is also spearheading new legislation to censor social media posts even if they do not break any laws against threats or incitement.
Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday morning, Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Michelle Donelan said it was “absolutely shocking” that a reporter for British state media was arrested while covering protests against COVID-related restrictions in Shanghai.
“We believe in press freedom and the media to be able to report all over the globe,” Donelan said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian accused the British media of “playing the victim” after it claimed cameraman Edward Lawrence was “beaten and kicked” by police.
Zhao urged foreign journalists not to engage in activities “unrelated to their role” — implying they were taking part in the protests rather than reporting them impartially.
The new draft of the Online Safety Bill, which Donelan’s department is pushing through Parliament, would force social media moderators to delete users’ posts if they have “reasonable grounds to infer” their content could cause “serious distress” to some individuals.
The previous version drafted under Donelan’s predecessor Nadine Dorries was criticised by MPs and free speech advocates for attempting to ban comments it dubbed “legal but harmful”.
Donelan herself said at the time that wording would create “a quasi-legal category between illegal and legal.”
A government factsheet published in May said the bill would only mandate censoring social media posts if some harm was “intended”, without a reasonable excuse or the defence of public interest — theoretically protecting satirical cartoons and statements of political opinion.
Ironically, Dorries was herself reportedly banned from a private WhatsApp group for Conservative Party MPs in December 2021 for defending then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson from her colleagues’ criticism.
November 29, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | China, Human rights, UK |
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The former disinformation czar for President Joe Biden’s administration has apparently landed on her feet after resigning amid controversy earlier this year. She has registered as a foreign agent representing a UK activist group that advocates for censorship of speech it finds objectionable.
Nina Jankowicz filed her registration paperwork with the US Department of Justice earlier this month, identifying herself as a representative for the London-based Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). Her work with CIR will include serving as an ambassador for the group with US policymakers, media outlets and technology companies.
Jankowicz resigned as the director of the newly created US Disinformation Governance Board last May, after the administration “paused” the initiative amid public outcry that it might operate as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” She had contributed to such fears by calling for blue-check Twitter users like her to police commentary on the social media platform by editing tweets that they considered false or misleading.
Jankowicz had also been criticized for being a purveyor of false information herself. For instance, she called the New York Post’s October 2020 scoop on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop a “Trump campaign product” and warned that militant supporters of then-president Donald Trump would show up at the polls to intimidate voters. She called for Big Tech platforms to censor allegations that Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab and claimed that online mockery of Vice President Kamala Harris was a threat to national security and democracy.
CIR, which is funded partly by the UK government, bills itself as an independent “social enterprise” that counters disinformation, exposes human rights abuses and combats online behavior it deems harmful to women and non-white people. Its advisers include former CIA analyst Cindy Otis and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who led his country’s accession to NATO.
Much of the group’s commentary is anti-Russia, especially as it relates to the Ukraine conflict. For instance, it accused Russian forces of committing various war crimes and claimed that Moscow illegally deported Ukrainian civilians to Russia. Last year, CIR claimed to have discovered a coordinated network of social media accounts that posted Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
CIR co-founder Ross Burley, a former British Foreign Office operative, has publicly called for social media platforms to ban certain independent journalists and outlets, such as the Grayzone, which he called a “Russian propaganda outfit.”
November 28, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | CIA, United States |
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By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 28.11.2022
Miguel Almaguer, the NBC News reporter whose reporting on last month’s Paul Pelosi hammer attack incident offered curious details which challenged the mainstream narrative at the time, has not been seen on air or tweeted since the media giant expunged his report and suspended him over unspecified “inaccurate information” in his report.
Almaguer, 45, reported on air on November 4 that Mr. Pelosi calmly opened the door to police officers responding to the 911 emergency call he placed after 2 am on October 28, but that he did not “declare an emergency” or try to leave the domicile, instead walking several feet into the foyer of his home toward the suspect, 42-year-old David DePape, who was armed with a hammer.
The report sparked questions about what 82-year-old Pelosi and DePape were doing before police showed up.
Almaguer’s reporting, which NBC has attempted to scrub from the internet, also challenged claims made by media that the attack was an act of “right-wing political violence” by an enraged Trump supporter “enflamed by right-wing conspiracy theories” and anti-Pelosi sentiment ahead of the November 8 midterm elections.
In a speech on November 3, President Biden attempted to tie the attack to the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, which he said had been fueled by the “dangerous” “lie” that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. “Thankfully, by the grace of God, Paul survived,” Biden said.
Further reporting uncovered that DePape was a Canadian national living in the US illegally, a nudism enthusiast suffering from drug addiction, and apparent supporter of liberal causes, hoisting a rainbow flag and a BLM sign on the rundown school bus he was living in.
DePape has been charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse and with federal charges of assault and kidnapping, with the latter carrying a maximum combined sentence of 50 years in prison. He has plead not guilty.
Pelosi was released from hospital on November 3 after recovering from surgery to treat a skull fracture and injuries to his hands and right arms.
November 28, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | United States |
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Senator Markey wants social media regulated for “safety”
Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has called on Congress to pass new legislation to regulate social media after Elon Musk ignored his demand letter.
On November 11, Markey sent a letter to Musk asking about the new paid account verification feature. The first rollout of Twitter Blue made it easier for users to impersonate politicians, celebrities, and brands. The Washington Post was able to create a verified account of Senator Markey.

After Markey shared a copy of the letter on Twitter and highlighted that The Post was able to impersonate him, Musk joked with him, writing: “Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody.” A few hours later, Musk wrote, “And why does your pp have a mask!?”

The billionaire was referring to Markey’s profile picture, which shows him in a face covering.
Markey later threatened the Tesla owner: “One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”
Musk had until November 25 to respond to Markey’s letter, which he did not.
“Elon Musk could respond to my tweets but failed to respond to my letter by yesterday’s deadline and answer basic questions about Twitter verification,” Markey tweeted on November 26. “Congress must end the era of failed Big Tech self-regulation and pass laws that put user safety over the whims of billionaires.”
Musk is yet to respond to Markey’s latest tweet. However, on Friday, he did appear to answer one of the senator’s questions by announcing a new verification system. It will require manual authentication and the check marks will have different colors depending on the type of user.
“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not), and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates,” Musk said.
November 27, 2022
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Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | United States |
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Bob Baer isn’t a fan of Elon Musk’s Twitter
Former CIA analyst Bob Baer, in an interview with CNN’s Boris Sanchez, said that the idea of “free speech” on Elon Musk’s Twitter is “nonsense.”
Sanchez started the discussion by noting that Musk recently said that banned accounts will be reinstated, after a poll the Tesla owner launched went in favor of granting amnesty to accounts that had been censored by Twitter.
Baer said, “Well Boris, I can tell you one thing, Putin is going to be all over Twitter.
“If there’s no regulations on this, fake accounts, spoofed accounts, the rest of it – this is a great opportunity for him. And so when he’s talking about the popular voice, Musk he’s really talking about Russian intelligence.”
He added: “The Russians are waiting for something like this. They need a propaganda campaign against the United States and against our support for Ukraine, and they’re gonna be all over Twitter – I guarantee this – supporting the far right, plans, demands to stop arming Ukraine. You just wait.”
Baer explained how Russia could use the platform for a disinformation campaign: “What Putin’s gonna do, and the Russians, is they’re gonna use this as a vehicle to save himself in Ukraine. And you know, whether it’s gonna work or not, I don’t know. But we’re gonna see, as soon as these restrictions come off, we’re gonna see the Russians all over it.”
Asked how Twitter can combat the spread of disinformation, Baer said that the platform was already doing it before Musk took over.
“Well that’s why the pre-Musk Twitter had 7000 people going through these accounts. You can pick ‘em out with algorithms, you can pick ‘em out by looking at ‘em. You can check IPs and the rest of it, and you simply block ‘em,” the CIA analyst explained.
7000 was the approximate total number of employees at Twitter, not the size of the moderation team.
Baer blasted Musk’s idea of free speech, saying, “And it’s not right. And you know, this freedom of speech is just nonsense, ’cause you can’t go into a movie theater and yell, ‘fire!’ It’s against the law,” – 🛡 repeating a statement that in itself is misinformation.
November 27, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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‘Hate speech’ laws are not simply censorship. Their deeper purpose is to terminate equality under the law, so the normative indigenous members of a nation are made to feel like an alien underclass.
Pawns Take Out the Kings & Queens
Those who have doubted that Western Civilisation is in the process of being dismantled are about to receive their definitive reply. The supposedly ‘unavoidable’ fire-brigade damage inflicted on our freedoms in the Spring of 2020, which has never been repaired or reversed, is about to be consolidated. The shout of ‘Emergency!’ was at that time sufficient to quiet most objections and provide reassurance that this was indeed a temporary imposition. Now, two and a half years later, the maintenance vans pull up and the workmen start to scrutinise the damage done by the firemen — the windows shattered by their axes, the shards of glass still protruding dangerously upwards, the splintered frames. As we look on expectantly, imagining that they are about to replace the broken glass and repair the damaged frames, another convoy of vehicles pulls up, this time bearing men with sledgehammers, crowbars, pneumatic drills, wonder bars, angle grinders — and, bringing up the rear, a scammel transporter with a large crane and wrecking ball. It becomes clear that what the workmen have in mind is not reconstruction, but demolition.
Thus, the ‘emergency’ is signalled as over and the Era of Permanent Despotism begins. Now we move into the world predicted two years ago by one Larry Fink, the CEO of the world’s leading assets management behemoth, BlackRock: ‘Markets don’t like uncertainty. Markets like, actually . . . totalitarian governments, where you have an understanding of what’s out there, and obviously the whole dimension is changing now with a democratisation of countries. And democracies are very messy.’
Since those fateful days in the Spring of 2020, this was always going to happen, being baked into the lockdown cake. This is because, if an ‘authority’ suspends supposedly inalienable rights and freedoms, and then, after a long period of withholding them without objectively discernible justification, trickles their simulacrum back out under the rubric of concession, it soon becomes clear that these rights and freedoms have ceased to exist. After that, it is only a matter of carting the husks away.
The portents of this were present from the beginning — in the absence of appropriate responses from media and ‘civil liberties’ bodies, in the strange mutism that gripped the familiar voices of objection and dissent — the poets, artists, philosophers — in the vacuum created by dogs not barking. It is like — as we have so often repeated in mutating sentences to ourselves, as though trying to hit upon a new formulation that would magic some new apprehension of the meaning of things — we have awoken in a world after a long, oblivious sleep, to find that the world has not merely changed but turned into something like the opposite of what we recall from the moments before unconsciousness. Out in the street in search of clues as to the dateline, we make eye-contact in the hope of encountering someone as troubled by what we are finding as ourselves, but receive back merely blank, indifferent stares. The New Normal is already normalised, and our memories of freedom and reason are as though increasingly unreliable, if not actual signs of derangement.
On mature reflection, it becomes clear that the era of freedom was not a stage along the way to Utopia, but a brief experiment that has now been abandoned as a failure. Only certain elements of the Freedom Revolution have been deemed worthy of retention: the right of the richest to stay rich; the rights of nonces and perverts to have their evil ways with children; the right of those claiming victimhood to plunder the reserves of those entitled to make no such claim. All this was set out in advance in the loosely framed prospectus known as Cultural Marxism. Even those who took the warnings on this score seriously did not take them seriously enough, for this new formula for human co-existence was in deadly earnest, whereas we thought it had something to do with the passing disgruntlement of the young or the ideological fancy of some of life’s losers. Now, or at least soon, we shall begin to see that it is all meant to be permanent and, once accomplished, irreversible.
Each former nation and its former citizens will soon discover their own concrete examples of what is a universal project of reversing the presumed gains made within Western civilisation going back to the Magna Carta. Some 30 months ago, we passed the terminus of the period of personal freedom, barely even remarking the moment, which occurred on perhaps an evening in late February or early March of 2020. Since then, we may have noticed in fits and starts that most of what we had always taken for granted about our terms of existence in the public world had changed utterly. The assumption that, as free people, we had the right to walk unfettered down a road or street, answerable to no one; or speak our minds on matters that struck discordantly our sense of justice or truth; or speak casually using possessive adjectives like ‘my’ or ‘our’ in respect of a house or a country — all this was coming to an end. In the interval between the initial sledgehammer blows to the windows of our liberty and the arrival of the demolition crews to take down the remnants of Western civilisation, we had gotten accustomed to being, you might say, pampered serfs, a condition that perhaps had some residual harmonic in the tom-tom rifts rippling through from back the ancestral line. We were ready for the next bulletin from on high. And now it has arrived, or is about to arrive, to a notice board near you, and the chief ‘takeaway’ is that the pampering is about to come to an end.
This week, in my country, Ireland, the bulletin board has overnight been posted with a new set of instructions, concerning what may be written, said or — in the first analysis — thought. It is called the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022, and relates to the issue that has become known as ‘hate speech’, which refers to the manner in which the citizenry is henceforth to be permitted to speak to and about certain named categories of ‘protected minorities’ whom we awoke not long ago to find unexpectedly in our midst. A quarter of a century ago, most of these minorities were unrepresented in our country, and no one dreamed that it might be necessary to introduce ‘hate speech’ legislation to protect the population from the various categories of ‘hate’ going around at that time. Since the turn of the millennium, however, our political class, under instructions from unseen external masters, has been diluting our population with indifferent aliens, more or less randomly selected or self-selecting, and delivered here for the purpose of sundering the claimed attachment of the Irish to the country they once thought of as ‘theirs’ — this country called ‘Ireland’. The Irish in general did not react with hostility to the newcomers, but that may have been because neither did they understand that the influence of new arrivals here was merely the first step in a much more elaborate and ominous process. This moment of the commencement of the Era of Permanent Despotism, however, brings a new dimension: the news that these outsiders are not merely hopeful newcomers, to be welcomed or tolerated or resented or embraced, but in fact the legal inheritors of what we once thought of as ‘our’ country. The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022 makes this abundantly clear: These people are not in any sense to be regarded as having come here as mendicants or aspirants, but as the legally protected instruments of a new order that essentially excludes those who were here all along.
The idea of Ireland belonging to the Irish is now legally dead — the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022 makes that quite clear. The idea of ‘my’ or ‘our’ country is dead too: It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
I confess that, having warned at some length about the dangers of the Irish manifestation of ‘hate speech’ laws — well in advance of their arrival — (see here and here),
I had lapsed into a distracted complacency at the moment of their publication in draft form last week. Bizarrely throwing myself at the mercy of jounaliars — a word I actually invented! — I read a number of media accounts that appeared to suggest that the sting of the proposals had been pulled — possibly on legal advice — and what remained was merely a reheating of existing lip service provision concerning ‘incitement to hatred’, which had barely if ever been used in its prior manifestation.
This article from the Irish Mirror, sent to me by a friend, provides an example.
Its description of the draft legislation expressly states that its primary purpose is to augment existing law with regard to crimes perceived to have an aggravating element of prejudice — or ‘hatred’ — based on, for example, race or sexual identity.
The report states:
The new Bill will create, for the first time in Ireland, specific hate crime offences.
They will be in the guise of aggravated forms of existing criminal offences where offenders are motivated by hatred of a protected characteristic such as race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity and disability.
The report, citing a Department of Justice statement, later elaborates:
‘All offences that were aggravated by a hate element will incur penalties that are higher than the ordinary form of the offense [sic], unless the penalties are already set at the maximum possible.
‘The Bill also provides that in any offence, other than the specific aggravated offences, where the Court determines that the perpetrator was motivated by prejudice in carrying out the offence, the Court shall treat that as an aggravating factor in sentencing the person.’
Even allowing for the article’s extreme tendentiousness and sensationalist mode of expression, it was hard, reading it, to see how such a measure could be any more than tedious, a nod toward multiculturalism, progressivism, et cetera, and therefore no great cause for concern. Perhaps our commentaries at the preliminary stages had had some effect? After reading the article, I responded reassuringly to what I thought my friend’s somewhat overwrought response to it, foolishly using the Mirror report as my point of reference:
In my estimation it will have no effect: The new Act is a paper tiger, which has been radically watered down from the early proposals and drafts of the Bill. This legislation requires an actual crime to have been committed, which may then be deemed to be of greater gravity by virtue of some ‘hate’ dimension. So it will only be relevant if, for example, someone assaults another person and it emerges that they were motivated by racism, or whatever. The sole area in which it might have relevance for commentators arises if the police were to engineer a situation where a crime was committed and could be linked to some utterance of a public figure. If someone beats up some nonce, for example, and offers as a defence that he was inspired to do it by Gemma O’Doherty, John Waters [et cetera]. But such prosecutions are already provided for in the 1989 Incitement to Hatred Act, which has been used about half a dozen times in 33 years, and never for this purpose. It is clear that the legal advice the Government was receiving made clear that they had no constitutional basis for creating the law they were seeking to, in which someone could have someone else prosecuted for ‘hate speech’ on the basis that he or she was ‘offended’ by something that person said, even if the ‘offence’ was targeted at someone else who was not offended. This Act is a very long way from that, and is clearly a face-saving exercise intended to reassure the Combine that ‘something is being done about hate speech’, when in reality little or nothing is altered.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG! I cannot say whether the article — and others of a similar nature that I have come across — was intended as a piece of deliberate misdirection, or whether it was simply a lazy co-option of a departmental press release with perhaps a similar objective, but either way it could scarcely have been pitched at a further remoteness from the truth. Certainly the author of the article does not appear to have had a copy of the draft Bill in front of him as he wrote his prejudicial diatribe, since virtually all of the article is directed at the provisions contained in the second half of the Bill, so that he would have had to plough his way through the most radical and important elements in order to construct the article as he did. This may indeed be part of a deliberate strategy to lull the public into a false sense of complacency — insofar as the public is exercised in the matter at all, which to a high degree it is not. In any event, it briefly lulled me into something that does not flatter me. It was several more days before I came to read the draft Bill, and what I found therein rattled me to the core of my being.
********************
Having since had an opportunity to read the draft Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022, I believe it to be extremely dangerous and, in fact, capable of, in the first instance, entirely deleting what is left of public debate or discussion on a number of issues: viz, race, ‘colour’, sexuality, what is called gender, Islam, atheism, et cetera — i.e. ‘protected characteristics’, which essentially means characteristics protected under Political Correctness/Cultural Marxism — as well as, purely tokenistically, nationality, disability and ‘descent’, whatever that may be.
Essentially, the Bill identifies and lists (though mostly without defining) the qualifying ‘protected characteristics’ which entitle a person to enhanced protection from the critical opinions of others under such headings. Instead of ‘critical opinions’, however, the Bill uses the term ‘hatred’, an amorphous term that is nowhere defined other than tautologously, as follows:
‘hatred’ means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics or any one of those characteristics.
The Bill co-opts ideological definitions like ‘colour’ and ‘gender’ without defining them legally or in everyday terms. Instead it presents a series of inter-linking reiterative terms that simply assume the definitions to be already clear.
‘Gender’, for example, is ‘defined’ as follows:
‘gender’ means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.
To the apocryphal man arrived from the Moon, this might refer to anything from hair-colour to horsepower.
In some contexts, by way of offering clarification, readers of the Bill are referred to the EU Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA of November 2008, dealing with ‘combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law’. (Confirming that the Bill is, accordingly, the expression of EU policy and mandates.) However, the Framework Decision tells us very little else, its ‘definitions’ being just as tautologous as those in the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022, which lazily informs that ‘A word or expression that is used in this Act and is also used in the Framework Decision has, unless the context otherwise requires, the same meaning in this Act as it has in the Framework Decision.’
‘Hatred’, for example, is defined in the Framework Decision as follows:
‘Hatred’ shall be understood as referring to hatred based on race, colour, religion, descent, or national or ethnic origin.
This is in no sense a definition of ‘hatred’. In fact, it tells us nothing of what hatred is, assuming that everyone already knows. The trouble is that, when the law starts to trick around with notions that ‘everyone already knows’, we very rapidly descend into subjectivism, arbitrariness, and — yes — prejudice.
Other critical words, terms and concepts are not defined at all. The concept of ‘incitement’, for example, is nowhere spelt out as to its meaning or particularities in either the Bill or the EU Council Framework Decision. What are to be the thresholds between acceptable public discourse (said to be protected in the Bill, but never defined) and what is called ‘hatred’? Who decides, and on what basis, is never specified.
Due to the paucity of adequate definitions, the Bill, once passed, would place virtually all consideration of the relevant issues in the hands of judges — all or most of whom are likely to be in sympathy with the Cultural Marxist agenda, or at least aware of which side their bread is buttered on — or juries likely to be prejudiced by relentless, expensively-purchased propaganda and NGO agitation.
In relation to the headline ‘offence’ of ‘incitement to violence or hated to persons on account of their protected characteristics’, the Bill would in effect render unsafe any commentary at all on certain contentious issues — for example transgenderism, immigration and the activities of homosexuals and/or LGBT activists. This is because the framework of the legislation is so hastily sketched out that it would be a matter ultimately for the subjective appraisal of a judge as to whether the alleged offence constituted a ‘hate crime’ or not, requiring would-be critics of the policy or campaign in question to err on the side of extreme caution. The result would be an inevitable chilling of all commentary in these areas.
The same will apply in respect of the consequence of the section headed ‘Offence of condonation, denial or gross trivialisation of genocide, etc., against persons on account of their protected characteristics’
The introduction of such an offence would, I believe, destroy any possibility of achieving revision of established understandings of key historical events, even if new information were to become available, rendering the existing interpretations cast in stone. Indeed, it is possible that, in certain circumstances, it might open up the possibility of rendering the use of the word ‘genocide’ illegal for all usage except in respect of those formally approved prior episodes in which it is already an agreed definition (i.e. ‘events specified in Article 6 of the Rome Statute’ — issued by the International Criminal Court in Rome on July 17th, 1998). This might mean, for example, that someone describing the Covid vaccination programme as ‘genocide’, in a context in which ‘hatred’ of some individual or group covered by the ‘protected characteristics’ provision was in the mix, might find themselves on the hook under this heading also and thereby liable, on summary conviction, to a sentence of up to 12 months, or, in the case of convictions on indictment, a sentence of five years imprisonment.
The offence of incitement would mean, in effect, that anyone who, in seeking to comment on certain controversial matters, risked ignoring the new underfoot conditions might be subject to prosecution on foot of the actions of random or unknown individuals which had simply been associated by the prosecutorial authorities or some (not necessarily implicated) complainant with some statement of that person at any time in the past. The connection could be made subjectively and would only need to satisfy a test of ‘reasonableness’, whatever that might mean.
It also seems that someone could be convicted under this legislation for simply possessing material likely to incite hatred — for example, a book by an author — such as Douglas Murray’s books about mass immigration and Woke insanity, for example — who is critical of issues implicating individuals or groups with ‘protected characteristics’.
The relevant section here specifies that a person shall be guilty of an offence of inciting violence or hatred if he/she ‘prepares or possesses material that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics or any of those characteristics with a view to the material being communicated to the public or a section of the public, whether by himself or herself or another person . . . or being reckless as to whether such violence or hatred is thereby incited.’ It shall be a defence to plead that the material was purely for the defendant’s own use, but if ‘it is reasonable to assume that the material was not intended for the personal use of the person’, the person shall be presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have been in possession of the material for the purposes of disseminating it to others.
In any particular case where allegations are made under the provisions of this legislation, if passed into law, concerning incitement to violence or hatred, or condoning or trivialising genocide, a search warrant may be obtained to search any premises at which any relevant material is alleged to exist. If a judge of the District Court is satisfied by information on oath of a police officer that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that evidence of, or relating to, the commission of an offence is to be found in a particular place, the judge may issue a warrant for the search of that place and any persons found there. The investigators may use ‘reasonable force’ to enter the place named in the warrant, to search it and anyone found there, and to ‘examine, seize and retain anything found at that place, or anything found in possession of a person present at that place at the time of the search’, that the investigating officer(s) reasonably believe(s) to be evidence of, or relating to, the commission of an offence.
The legislation will also permit the seizure and retention of any such material — for example a computer or document — ‘for so long as is necessary’. The officer conducting the search may open and operate any computer found at the location or require anyone present to supply relevant passwords or encryption keys, or operate a computer for the purpose of enabling a search of its contents, and, if requested, to produce the information accessible by the computer ‘in a form in which the information is visible and legible, or . . . in which it can be removed and in which it is, or can be made, visible and legible.’
In other words, Welcome to Stasi Ireland, changed utterly in the name of progress and ‘tolerance’: totalitarianism bearing down on all in the name of defending the sensitivities of noisy minorities.
Incidentally, the generality of the Bill’s provisions refers to material being disseminated ‘to the public’ and to ‘a section of the public’, suggesting that it shall not be a defence to argue that the commentary was — in whatever sense — ‘in-house’ — even if the location of the alleged offence was a private house: it is entirely probable that the law will be applied to statements made in a private dwelling where non-family members are present and have elected to file a complaint.
The religious aspects are confusing (religion is, nominally at least, a ‘protected characteristic’) and likely to be of no benefit in protecting any aspects of Christian culture or belief. For the first time, atheism becomes a protectorate of Cultural Marxism. Since the Government has already taken steps to remove anti-blasphemy legislation and its constitutional underpinning, it is scarcely credible that the effect of this law would be to restore it in substance, other than for groups (like Muslims) that are protected under another characteristic as well.
The supposed ‘free speech provision’ of the Bill is meaningless and toothless, since it offers only the promise that consideration of a reference to a person or group on the basis of protected characteristics shall not ‘solely’ be the basis of the court’s decision. Again this is ringed around with non-specific concepts and loose definitions. There is supposedly a provision allowing for ‘reasonable and genuine contributions’, in the contexts of literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse, and we are told that this means ‘a contribution that is considered by a reasonable person as being reasonably necessary or incidental to such discourse.’ Again, who decides this? How is ‘reasonably necessary’ to be measured? In a highly-charged, propagandised culture such as Ireland has recently been converted into, how can this be regarded as offering any guarantee of protection to someone seeking to advance unpopular, untested or culturally unsupported viewpoints? And, since the public discourse occurs primarily to support the advancement of tentative and often esoteric ideas, how can this be described as a protection for freedom of expression and commentary where it might matter? It is interesting, here, that the term ‘reasonable person’ has hitherto been mainly associated, legally speaking, with defamations, where at stake in the judicial process would be the reputation of a specific individual. In such circumstances, the complained-of commentary would be defensible by dint of truth or fair comment, but here, since the entire crucible is decked out in ideology, anyone who detects disparagement of himself under a ‘protected characteristic’ will be able to trump any defence of free expression by virtue of his hurt feelings. Before writing, saying something — and yes, according to the Bill, ‘displaying’, ‘publishing’, ‘distributing’, ’disseminating’, ‘showing’ or ‘playing’ such communications, or ‘making the material available in any other way including through the use of an information system to the public or a section of the public’ — the would-be cultural critic will therefore need to think about how his remarks will go down with the most ideologically-slanted person in the (court)room.
Indeed, the restriction is likely to go much further in practice, since the text of the legislation refers to problematic ‘behaviour’ as well as statements.
For the purposes of this Part, a person’s behaviour shall include behaviour of any kind and, in particular, things that the person says, or otherwise communicates, as well as things that the person does and such behaviour may consist of a single act or a course of conduct.
What this means is anyone’s guess, but it is certain that, by ‘behaving’ — i.e., by being alive and breathing in a public space — a person may be liable to prosecution under this legislation. It all depends on how his ‘behaviour’ or ‘communications’ is/are interpreted by the most angry/paranoid individual in the vicinity. For once in this piece of draft legislation, we have stumbled upon a reliable — if accidental — definition, for this is the precise definition of totalitarianism.
Under the heading of ‘incitement to hatred’, the Bill supplants the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act, 1989, which will be repealed in the new law, if it is passed. This crime, it appears, can now be committed either with intent or inadvertently, since the criteria include inciting violence or hatred against a protected group or person with or without the intention of doing so. The criterion, again, will be whether some unspecified observer, applying some unspecified non-definition, believes that such an incident of incitement has occurred. Here, the Bill again provides for the defence of ‘genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse’, but nothing of this is defined, and already the NGO lobbyists are screaming blue murder against any such defence being permitted. Indeed, the incorporation of ‘bodies corporate’ within the scope of the Bill’s prosecutorial reach will mean that theatres, media organisations, cinemas, art galleries, political organisations, churches, schools and colleges, and scientific bodies may be held responsible for anything said or communicated, or any behaviour of any person on its property, that is found to fall under the heading of ‘hatred’.
A body corporate shall be liable if the relevant offence is ‘attributable to the failure, by a director, manager, secretary or other officer of the body corporate, or a person purporting to act in that capacity, to exercise, at the time of the commission of the relevant offence and in all the circumstances of the case, the requisite degree of supervision or control of the relevant person.’ In such circumstances, the body corporate shall be guilty of an offence.
As regards jurisdiction, the Bill stipulates that its provisions should apply to all material placed on any information system, ‘whether or not the offence involved material hosted on an information system in the State’, or ‘whether or not the person was in the State when the offence was committed.’ This would seem to mean that any person, in any country, might be liable to prosecution in Ireland for anything posted on any such information system, regardless of the location of that system. Again, total totalitarianism.
All in all, it is an extremely dangerous piece of legislation every bit as bad as was promised by the various projections and drafts we saw coming through over the past couple of years. In effect, anyone seeking to speak publicly about any of the issues relating to ‘protected characteristics’ (chiefly Cultural Marxist obsessions) would be taking their liberty in their hands.
Let us be straightforward: The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 is essentially a Bill to protect the pursuit of the externally imposed policy amounting to a programme for the destruction of Ireland from any internal commentary or criticism.
A friend observes: ‘Even in the Arts (theatre, literature, painting, film-making, etc), anything that ‘offends’ those protected anti-Christian minorities will be deemed a hate crime offender, hence, culture is f****d. If they carry out this law in a draconian way and start jailing people, Ireland will become unliveable. Basically, it’s a law that prevents heteronormative people and Christians from expressing the truth.’
This, of course, is entirely correct. The vagueness of the legislation will, if anything, exacerbate its intrinsically tyrannical nature, imposing a chilling cautiousness on those who might be disposed to challenge proposed initiatives and developments, especially those proposing the most radical changes to Irish society. These laws will therefore enable even the most far-reaching of reality-reshaping measures to be pushed through the institutions of society without any possibility of proper discussion or debate.
But, over and above all that, the proposed law is a charter for the disincorporation of each and every existing Irish-born person as a proprietorial shareholder of the nation of Ireland, from which flows the inevitable effect of winding up the Irish nation as a community of people sharing the same island space. ‘Hate speech’ laws are not simply censorship — their deeper purpose is to terminate equality under the law, so that the normative indigenous members of a nation are made to feel like an alien underclass, while the actually imported underclass, and the State-sponsored disaffected, are used as battering rams to decimate the native culture and existing societal structures — the pawns taking out the Sovereign People, Kings and Queens alike.
This has, finally, triggered the vindication of the fear expressed by the great Irish journalist and patriot, Thomas Davis:
‘This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in its archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast organisations, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and self-mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and sun and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the past, we are a thriftless and a hopeless people.’
The Government, of course, has such contempt for the intelligence of the Irish public that it will claim that what it is seeking to achieve is a kinder, gentler Ireland for everyone. This is nonsense: The way to achieve a kinder, gentler Ireland would have been to control inward migration to whatever was necessary to meet the needs of the economy, and the limits of what the culture could bear. At the very least, it would have entailed consulting the population concerning what a succession of governments since the turn of the millennium has imposed. By dint of stealth and moral blackmail, the political class has, for more than 20 years, been flooding the country with indifferent aliens who come here seeking benefits and are coached on arrival by NGOs to treat the host population as inherently racist. This, too, is a key element of the Cultural Marxist agenda, which seeks to impose burdens of guilt on ‘white’ populations on foot of the mixed history of Western imperialism. Ireland, however, far from having an imperial past, was itself, for hundreds of years, the casualty of English colonialism, having had much of its culture, including its language annihilated by barbaric laws, and its population periodically decimated by genocide camouflaged as natural disaster. These calamities also, of course, provoked the mass exodus of population to the New World and Britain, leaving Ireland in the early years of the third millennium semantically helpless before the disingenuous charge that, its own people having been ‘welcomed’ in these places, the Ireland of 2010 and 2020 had a responsibility to repay the favour to the universe. What is never allowed is that Irish people went abroad with little or no chance of ever returning home, to work like Trojans in menial jobs in inhospitable places, leaving their native land to stagnate for want of youthful energy and creativity.
Ireland, then, itself a sufferer at the hands of globalist colonialism, has in recent years been force-fed a diet of imported ideology, including Critical Race Theory, which creates a public discussion bearing the almost constant insinuation that Ireland is on a par with Alabama in its past treatment of black and coloured people. The truth could hardly be more different, but truth has been among the most recent emigrants from the Emerald Isle. The result is that the Irish Government, under instructions from the EU bureaucrats, now invites the world to our shores, with promises of free houses, incomes without obligation, immunity from all kinds of legal consequences for wrongdoing — and now: cultural protection from the merest slight of a disgruntled native who is himself entitled to none of these benefits. This week, homelessness among Irish people approached 11,000 — the highest ever recorded — while a massive building near Castlebar was being prepared to house a further tranche of (alleged) Ukrainians. Irish people live in tents and cardboard boxes while Ukrainians, supposedly ‘fleeing a war zone’, but without encountering any process of vetting or verification, move into duplex apartments at the taxpayer’s expense.
Among the true objectives of the ‘hate speech’ legislation is to protect a treasonous political class against criticism from its own taxpaying population for the crimes it is committing against them, its treachery against the heroes of the long struggle to achieve freedom at a cost invariably paid in blood and life-force, and ultimately the destruction of one of the oldest and intellectually richest cultures in human history.
But even this is not the deepest, most malevolent of the reasons why the Irish political class — Irish-born men and women who have been privileged to be entrusted with care of their country and its inheritance, are in 2022 seeking to impose these new Penal Laws on their own people. The deepest reason has to do with facilitating powerful and already wealthy outsiders in plundering Ireland of everything worth taking, nailed down or otherwise.
The proposed law will destroy — as is the uppermost intention behind it — the concept of equality before the law. It need hardly be pointed out that the Bill, while presenting itself as a charter for increased tolerance and societal gentleness, is in reality a charter for the dominance of minorities over the pre-existing population. In each individual case, it will defend, uphold or elevate that which is alien, esoteric or abnormative, which means that the normal, the here-before and the undemanding get stuffed and silenced every time. It is obvious that anyone who imagines they will be able to use the law to defend themselves from attacks on their Catholicism/Christianity would be barking up the wrong tree. Similarly anyone imagining that it offers some kind of protection from what the new gender ideology classes as ‘cis gender’ persons (i.e. those who wish to remain as they were made) had better think again. The law will benefit listed minorities only, and everyone else will be laughed out of court by the occupiers of a now all but totally corrupted Bench. Because this is a Cultural Marxist-inspired law, it is designed to weaponise the grievances of minorities so as to silence and thereafter dispossess the indigenous former majority. The trick is that it empowers each individual only in particular sub-divisions of his existence — sexuality, colour, et cetera — while simultaneously denying him as much as anyone else the generic rights that citizens of Western democracies (now ‘former democracies’) took for granted until the day before yesterday. Even the most ‘protected characteristic’ endowed beneficiaries will be entitled to prosecute their grievance only on the narrow basis of particular, singular characteristics, and in other contexts have the same rights as everyone else, which is to say practically none. The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, 2022 will not restore to any person walking upon the sand bank of 2023 Ireland the rights which the political class stole from the Irish people in 2020, with no intention of restoring.
Once the Bill passes into law, what for the moment we might call the ‘native Irish’ will immediately become second-class legal citizens, being in a sense the prisoners and slaves of newcomers boasting legally superior ‘protected characteristics’ that give them exalted protection in any dispute with a native Irish person. Each surviving member of the native Irish will thereafter live on tenterhooks, waiting for the moment of accusation, to be followed hard in the ideological kangaroo courts of post-Irish Ireland by conviction, punishment, incarceration, and thereafter lifetime ignominy. Placing this alongside other imminent measures, such as the banning of public protests under certain headings (abortion, for example), the ‘delimiting’ of private property, and the seizure by the State of rights over every drop of water in the land, what we are observing is the introduction of a new charter of Penal Laws directed at the indigenous people of Ireland, albeit this time framed and implemented not by a monstrous occupier by their own elected ‘representatives’, the ‘monsters with human faces’ who smile as they help the robber barons to steal our children’s birthright. Be in no doubt: The ultimate purpose of this is the wholesale plunder of all resources that have not already been transferred into the ownership/control of the Combine.
What is happening, then, amounts to the final dispossession, re-plantation and re-colonisation of Ireland and the re-enslavement of the indigenous Irish people, using indifferent aliens baited by fistfuls of toytown money, as the principal instrument of plunder.
The present moment is a little analogous to what occurred a decade ago, when the Irish electorate was persuaded to annul the parental rights of parents, essentially transferring them in their entirely to the State, in the name of giving ‘rights to children’. This cleared the way for gay marriage, gay parenting and ‘legal’ gay families, at the expense of the normative and natural definitions arising from procreative heterosexuality. In a somewhat comparable fashion, enforced mass migration is an instrument of rights-stripping in the context of the nationhood of the individual: each newcomer is set against each indigenous person, who is thereby cancelled out and reduced to a free-floating nomad in his own former country. That much of this process will be effected on an ostensibly ‘voluntary’ basis — i.e, people surrendering to the chilling intent of the legislation — is all part of the plan. When it is all done and dusted, and the old Irish take belatedly to recrimination, they will be told that there was nothing in the least coercive about the handover: They went along with everything of their own free will, and have no one to blame but themselves.
It is important to stress that what is happening is in no sense or respect intended to be to the ultimate benefit of the newcomers, who are simply being used as proxy occupiers so as to effect the first, and most difficult, stage of dispossession. To loosen the grip on Ireland of a people who, in many instances, can trace their lineage there for hundreds or thousands of years, is a massive undertaking. The purpose, in the first instance, as already stated, is to dislodge the Sovereign People, and the proxies are here used as pawns to take out the Kings and Queens who have lived here all their lives and thought of this, their metaphysical home, as being no sand bank thrown up by some recent caprice of earth.
November 27, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Ireland |
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Samizdat – 26.11.2022
WASHINGTON – Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, says he will create a new smartphone if the social network is removed from the Apple and Google app stores.
“I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone,” Musk tweeted on Friday, in response to a user’s suggestion that Musk should produce his own phone instead of the “biased, snooping iPhone and Android,” if the Twitter app becomes unavailable on them.
On October 28, Musk finalized the acquisition of Twitter, which cost him $44 billion. Following the takeover, Musk changed the company’s day-to-day operations, including the termination of Twitter’s executives, who were responsible for the platform’s privacy and cybersecurity, as well as regular Twitter employees. The significant policy changes have caused a wave of concern.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing market research data, that more than one-third of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers had stopped putting ads on the social media platform in the two weeks following Musk’s takeover of the company.
Earlier this month, Twitter unblocked former US President Donald Trump’s account, banned after the January 6, 2021 events at the US Capitol, as the majority of participants in a survey conducted by Musk voted in favor of the measure.
Musk has promised that Twitter will reinstate blocked accounts after the majority of users voted for “general amnesty.”
November 26, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Apple, Google, Human rights, Twitter |
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During the summit held in Bali, Indonesia, the G20 Leaders signed a declaration endorsing the censorship of “disinformation.” The Biden administration endorsed the declaration by publishing it on the White House website.
The G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration mainly focused on climate change, including Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). However, the leaders have linked SDGs with online censorship.
Section 24 of the declaration says there is a need to censor online disinformation.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transformation of the digital ecosystem and digital economy,” the section began. “We recognize the importance of digital transformation in reaching the SDGs.”
It adds that for there to be “trust in the digital economy,” they should “create an enabling, inclusive, open, fair and non-discriminatory digital economy that fosters the application of new technologies, allows businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive, and protects and empowers consumers.”
The G20 leaders believe there is a need to censor “false” information for digital infrastructure to thrive: “We acknowledge the importance to counter disinformation campaigns, cyber threats, online abuse, and ensuring security in connectivity infrastructure.”
The White House endorsing a declaration that calls for more censorship is not surprising considering it is the subject of the lawsuit filed by Missouri’s and Louisiana’s Attorneys General alleging collusion between the government and social media companies to censor viewpoints surrounding Covid and more.
November 24, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | G20, Human rights, United States |
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While there has been a great deal of hullabaloo concerning Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, one would probably not have expected senior officials at the United Nations to find it necessary to have their say on the matter. Yet on November 5th Volker Türk, the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, did indeed weigh-in, sending an open letter to Mr. Musk to express his “concern and apprehension” about Twitter’s role in the “digital public square”. He urged Musk to make sure human rights would be “central to the management of Twitter”, and to “address harms” associated with the platform, and also took the time for a bit of finger-wagging at Twitter’s new CEO for sacking Twitter’s human rights team (no, I had no idea it had one either).
The letter was almost certainly only sent so that Türk, who assumed office in mid-October and is a comparative unknown (some UN insiders were apparently hoping for Michelle Obama or Angela Merkel), can get a bit of recognition. But it is instructive nonetheless in giving stark expression to the awkward position which human rights advocates have found themselves adopting when it comes to one of the most salient issues of the day – the regulation of speech online and particularly the subjects of disinformation and misinformation.
This happens in the course of two short paragraphs. Starting off, Türk is keen to emphasise the importance of protecting free speech. Twitter, he notes, is being pressed by governments to take down content or use upload filters, and he urges it in clear terms to “stand up for the rights to privacy and free expression to the full [sic] extent possible under relevant laws”. So, on the one hand, he adopts a strong position against censorship, implying that speech should only be restricted online where it would cross the border into illegality.
Yet on the other hand, in the very next breath, he declares that “free speech is not a free pass” and that the “viral spread of harmful disinformation…results in real world harms”. Therefore, in his view, Twitter must take responsibility to “avoid amplifying content” that results in harms to people’s rights – whether or not, by implication, it is technically legal. Hence, for example, scepticism about the efficacy of vaccines, legally expressed, ought nonetheless to be supressed given the impact it might have on the right to health.
This can only be described as cakeism. For Türk, it is apparently desirable both to protect freedom of expression to the fullest extent possible under the law, and yet also to restrict lawful speech where it might result in ‘harms’. It is easy to see the appeal in the abstract of the idea that these positions can be reconciled, and Türk indeed concludes his letter by suggesting that “our shared human rights offer a unifying way forward”. But it is difficult to see from its content how this could be so. Does Türk believe that freedom of speech should be protected insofar as it is possible to do so? Or does he believe lawful speech should be suppressed to prevent harm? He can believe in one, but he surely cannot coherently believe in both.
The wider point is that human rights advocates like Türk have rather lost faith in their own model. For decades, it has been orthodox human rights doctrine that all human rights are, in UN-speak, “indivisible and interdependent”. The rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association, non-discrimination, health, food, housing, education, and so on, all support one another and, indeed, cannot properly be enjoyed without the others. It is therefore not only possible to secure (say) freedom of expression and the right to health – they actually bolster each other.
The rationale for this can be readily understood: if freedom of expression is secure, then people will have access to the full range of information and opinion available on any given topic, and therefore policymakers, healthcare providers, doctors and patients will be able to make better health-related decisions than they would otherwise. There is therefore a direct link between securing freedom of speech and the right to health. (And conversely, of course, securing the right to health means increasing opportunities for people to express themselves freely – one will find it much easier to actively participate in public discourse if one is in good health than not.) What is true in this example is true across the round, and the orthodox position in the UN human rights system has long been that these mutually-supportive linkages can be found throughout the human rights corpus.
This is not, however, the position that Türk adopts in his letter. To reiterate, for the new High Commissioner, freedom of expression and the right to health are not in fact “indivisible and interdependent”, but incommensurate. If people are able to express themselves freely, they will circulate dangerous disinformation about vaccines, and harm will result. Freedom of expression does not reinforce the right to health; it undermines it.
Türk is no loose cannon. As short as his letter to Musk is, it essentially summarises the position adopted in a recent report to the UN General Assembly by the Secretary-General himself. This report manages somehow to express a robust defence of the “right to hold opinions without interference” and an insistence that “free communication of information and ideas about public and political issues… is essential”, while at the same time advocating for state intervention to prevent the spread of inaccurate information concerning “public health, electoral processes or national security” and the demonetisation of legal-but-harmful content. The same schizophrenic attitude is adopted as in Türk’s letter, but the message is clear enough: while it is necessary to pay lip service to the importance of freedom of expression, the system as a whole now disavows the “indivisible and interdependent” doctrine, and instead sees freedom of expression as being potentially antagonistic to other rights.
What are we to make of this? The clue is in the types of harmful inaccurate information that both Türk and the Secretary-General identify as particularly dangerous and hence warranting state suppression – i.e., those implicating public health, electoral processes and national security. It is no accident that these subjects map pretty closely to the issues that are of greatest concern to the global bien pensant class in which these figures are so firmly entrenched – Covid vaccines, ‘election denialism’, and Russian disinformation. And it is not really a great surprise that when the chips are down and the consensus within that class is that oppositional views on those topics represent a genuine threat, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Secretary-General suddenly find that freedom of expression is not so “indivisible and interdependent” with respect to other rights at all. Indeed, it is to be sacrificed where those particular concerns are raised. Human beings, as we know, can be remarkably flexible on points of principle when peer pressure is applied – even, it turns out, senior human rights lawyers and UN Secretary-Generals.
More broadly, if one were being especially cynical, one might say that this is further evidence supporting the long-term criticism of the international human rights system – that it is essentially a forum for pharisaical expressions of right-on opinions which vary in accordance with whatever the ‘current thing’ is. This would not be entirely fair – the UN human rights organs do very important work – but it is sometimes easy to see how this view proliferates. Türk’s letter is suggestive not so much of a commitment to the letter of human rights law, but rather only to the contemporary concerns of a particular elite constituency. This in turn indicates that the UN human rights apparatus as a whole is geared more toward addressing the anxieties of that constituency than it is towards standing up for human rights across the board. Is it any wonder, then, that ordinary people generally take a sceptical view about human rights in the round?
Dr. David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School.
November 24, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, United Nations |
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Blaming ‘Libs of TikTok’ for a deranged murderer’s actions is shameless politicization
Almost as repugnant as the deadly attacks that are occurring with alarming frequency in the United States is the speed with which certain individuals rush to politicize them. The Club Q massacre in Colorado Springs, which left five dead and 18 injured, was certainly no exception.
The Democrats’ reaction kicked off with predictable calls for gun control. In this particular tragedy, however, the killer, 22-year-old Andersen Lee Aldrich, should never have been allowed to buy a gun in the first place. Moreover, he should have been high on the FBI’s ‘person of interest’ radar.
A year-and-a-half before Aldrich went on his deadly shooting spree, this troubled young man (who, according to court documents, has now started to identify as non-binary and use the pronouns them/they) threatened his family with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors to evacuate while police talked him into surrendering. Yet, despite this, the district attorney of Colorado, Michael J. Allen, not only refused to press charges, but did not impose Colorado’s red-flag laws, which would have prevented Aldrich from purchasing a firearm. Had the Democratic-run state of Colorado enforced its own laws, five people might still be alive today.
Perhaps sensing the weakness of their anti-gun position, the Democrats rushed to politicize the tragedy by blaming conservative figures for instigating the violence.
Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chastised her Republican colleague Representative Lauren Boebert in the wake of the tragedy for “elevating anti LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies,” while MSNBC reporter Brandy Zadrozny took aim at a popular Twitter account for merely pointing out what is becoming increasingly clear to many Americans.
“Online… this Libs of TikTok account, which feeds larger media like Fox News stories, what has happened is the demonization of LGBTQ people, calling them ‘groomers’ and ‘pedophiles,’” remarked Zadrozny. “This type of thing, whether it’s motive or not, what we know is that it’s just another reason why LGBTQ people are scared.”
Yet the goal of voices like Libs of TikTok, which uses actual progressive sources, is not “the demonization of LGBTQ people,” as Zadrozny argues, but rather to shine a spotlight on an issue that many millions of people view as a serious problem. A recent poll showed that 57% of Americans support a ban on teaching young children about sexual orientation and transgender issues in public schools.
Meanwhile, it does not require much digging to see that the sexualization of children is really happening. Consider a recent advertising campaign by the famous fashion house, Balenciaga.
The photo shoot features a very young girl holding a teddy bear that is dressed up in a bondage outfit. Another picture in the series displays a Balenciaga bag on top of a sheaf of documents, one of which appears to reference the 2002 US Supreme Court case “Ashcroft vs Free Speech Coalition,” which struck down some provisions in an anti-child pornography law. The paper wasn’t featured prominently, but it’s hard to imagine it ended up there by accident.
Although the left would like people to ignore it, it stands to reason that these highly suggestive images could inspire acts of violence against children, albeit of a different kind from those witnessed at the Colorado Springs gay club. The only way to address these very real threats to children is to speak openly about them.
Youth today are being exposed to a slew of complex ideas and actions – from questioning their ‘true’ gender, to watching drag queens perform at the local gay club. Having been subjected to such radical concepts at the most impressionable age, an increasing number of young people eventually make the fateful decision to have a sex-change operation.
It is only natural that millions of Americans will want to make their opinions heard on these topics that could have life-long consequences for their children. They should be able to do so without facing accusations of being accomplices to murders carried out by deranged individuals. But as far as the left is concerned, anyone who speaks out against the sexualization of children will be responsible for getting more people killed, just like we saw at Club Q.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.
November 24, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Human rights, MSNBC, United States |
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Dr. Anthony Fauci today faced questions from Attorneys General Eric Schmitt (Missouri) and Jeff Landry (Louisiana) in their lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with Big Tech platforms to censor content critical of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures.
Fauci sat for a deposition one day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted the depositions of three other Biden administration officials.
In a statement released Tuesday in advance of Fauci’s deposition, Schmitt said:
“Tomorrow, along with my colleague from Louisiana, my Office and I will depose Dr. Anthony Fauci in our lawsuit against the Biden Administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor freedom of speech.
“Since we filed our landmark lawsuit, we have uncovered documents and discovery that show clear coordination between the Biden Administration and social media companies on censoring speech, but we’re not done yet. We plan to get answers on behalf of the American people. Stay tuned.”
The statement also quoted Jeff Landry:
“We all deserve to know how involved Dr. Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic; tomorrow, I hope to find out.
“And I will continue fighting for the truth as it relates to Big Government colluding with Big Tech to stifle free speech.”
Schmitt and Landry sued President Biden, Fauci and others on May 5. New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit group representing outspoken critics of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty and also Jill Hines, joined the lawsuit in August, as did Jim Hoft, founder and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Pundit.
According to the complaint, government officials colluded with and coerced Big Tech and social media platforms to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content” relating to COVID-19.
Several officials named in the suit, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, argued they shouldn’t be required to be deposed, but a federal judge on Monday denied a request to quash Psaki’s subpoena.
The same judge, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, on Oct. 21 ordered Fauci and other government officials to provide depositions under oath.
In addition to Fauci and Psaki, other government officials slated to be deposed include:
- FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan
- Carol Crawford, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Digital Media Branch
- Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly
- White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty
- Daniel Kimmage, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center
- U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy
Two lower-level officials were listed as alternates: Lauren Protentis of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in place of Easterly, and former White House COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt in place of Flaherty.
A previous ruling had forced the above-named individuals to provide written testimony.
Judge rejects ‘self-serving blanket denials’
In his Oct. 21 ruling, Judge Doughty agreed with the plaintiffs that Fauci’s prior “self-serving blanket denials” regarding his role in censoring certain types of content and viewpoints on social media could not be taken at face value, necessitating a deposition.
Fauci challenged the order to sit for a deposition, arguing the communications in question are protected by executive privilege. But Judge Doughty ordered Fauci to turn over the documents within 21 days and to answer the plaintiffs’ questions in full.
Landry and Schmitt filed a request for depositions Oct. 10. In a statement released at the time by Schmitt, he said:
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath.
“It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
Depositions of three Biden administration officials on hold
In an order issued Monday, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit temporarily halted the scheduled depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy.
According to Politico, the three-judge panel unanimously found Judge Doughty had erred in approving the depositions without first examining whether there were “other means” of obtaining the information the plaintiffs are seeking.
The court sent the case back to Doughty for further review. According to the order:
“Thus, before any of the depositions may go forward, the district court must analyze whether the information sought can be obtained through less intrusive, alternative means, such as further written discovery or depositions of lower-ranking officials.
“Written findings as to the availability and sufficiency of alternatives need to be entered.”
In a statement provided to The Defender by Landry’s office, Landry said, “These developments do not change my pursuit of the truth. We respect the court’s decision and will continue in the discovery phase of this case.”
Thursday’s court order came after lawyers for the government argued the plaintiffs should not have the ability to depose the three officials in question, on the basis that they are high-ranking government officials, and that the depositions would “unavoidably distract” them from “their important and time-sensitive duties,” which would “cause irreparable harm.”
However, the federal government’s motion for a partial stay of Judge Doughty’s deposition order was denied. The Nov. 21 order stated, “We make no ruling on the petition … at this time.”
Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy were scheduled to be deposed in early December.
On Wednesday Judge Doughty, in a separate ruling, ordered Psaki to sit for a deposition and rejected an attempt to shield FBI Agent Chan from answering questions under oath.
Plaintiffs in the case argued that none of the officials were “high-ranking,” and Judge Doughty agreed, finding that the “burdens” the officials would face as a result of sitting for depositions were outweighed by the necessity of gathering more information regarding the allegations in question prior to ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction.
According to the 5th Circuit’s order:
“It is not enough, as the district court found, that these officials may have ‘personal knowledge’ about certain communications.
“That knowledge may be shared widely or have only marginal importance in comparison to the ‘potential burden’ imposed on the deponent.”
According to the court, the government already produced “extensive written discovery.” The government claims that these documents do not reveal any violations of the First Amendment, while the plaintiffs claim otherwise.
Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit asked Judge Doughty to consider ruling on the overall viability of the lawsuit before allowing the depositions to proceed.
The 5th Circuit said Judge Doughty should have not issued a ruling regarding the depositions until the courts decided on the government’s motion to dismiss — even though that motion was withdrawn after plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and the government has not filed a new motion to dismiss.
According to Politico, the 5th Circuit’s order is not final: Judge Doughty may still decide, based on a newly clarified analysis, that depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy are needed.
Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit’s order may strengthen efforts by Psaki and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to halt her deposition.
At a recent hearing, Psaki’s lawyers claimed there is no evidence she had met or had been in contact with any social media executives regarding purported “misinformation,” although she did express critical remarks about social media platforms during White House press briefings.
In his Nov. 21 order, Judge Doughty rejected that claim, writing:
“Despite the fact that Psaki is a former high-ranking official, the potential burden upon Psaki was outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech had been suppressed.”
Previously, a federal judge in Virginia rejected the arguments made by Psaki and the DOJ, including that sitting for a deposition would place an “undue burden” on her, taking her away from her family and her new job at MSNBC for several days.
Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia passed the issue to Judge Doughty. Davis dismissed Psaki’s claims, arguing that Psaki and the DOJ were attempting an “end-run” around the deposition order.
Judge Doughty previously found “that Plaintiffs have proven that Jennifer Psaki has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”
“Psaki has made a number of statements that are relevant to the Government’s involvement in a number of social-media platforms’ efforts to censor its users across the board for sharing information related to COVID-19,” Judge Doughty added. “Any burden on Psaki is outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech has been suppressed.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
November 23, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, FBI, United States |
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