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Dixy Lee Ray

On September 3, 1914, Dixy Lee Ray was born. 

Her stint as governor of the State of Washington was a controversial one, as she economized in startling ways, and proved largely unsympathetic to environmentalist politics. Indeed, she later wrote Trashing the Planet, which took on trendy “solutions” to environmental problems, based in no small part on her own experience and perspective as a scientist. She was an early critic of the developing “global warming” pseudo-“consensus.”

Ray died on January 2, 1994.

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First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Banned in Brazil

Brazil, censorship, authoritarianism, mind control

Twitter is being banned in Brazil by a “Supreme Court justice” who seems to be the de facto ruler of the country. Who is also threatening Brazilians with massive fines, $8,900 USD daily, if they try to reach Twitter through a VPN.

A VPN or virtual private network hides your IP address and encrypts your web traffic. VPNs protect privacy and let you visit sites otherwise inaccessible. Sites that purvey “disinformation,” i.e., criticism of the government, and other verboten content. VPNs combat censorship and surveillance.

The justice, Alexandre de Moraes, issued an edict to ban Twitter after Twitter owner Elon Musk refused to obey censorship orders.

Twitter had told users that it expected to be shut down by Justice de Moraes “because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

Now Musk declares that an “unelected pseudo-​judge in Brazil is destroying [free speech] for political purposes.”

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino adds that according to Brazil’s own constitution, “censorship of a political, ideological and artistic nature is forbidden.… Until there is change in Brazil, X [Twitter] will be shut down.”

Dictatorships often issue “illegal orders” in the sense that these contradict constitutional provisions whose force has faded … or that were never intended to do anything but fool people to begin with. Such political systems are not truly constitutional.

Nor would the situation be any better were the “constitution” more honest, simply announcing that whatever the dictator says goes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today

Henry George

September 2 marks the 1839 birth of American economist and reformer Henry George. 

George is most famous for his 1879 treatise, Progress and Poverty, but made other contributions, including advocacy of the secret ballot and his able economic policy polemic Protection or Free Trade (1886).

George died on October 29, 1897.

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First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Give Mr. Bean Another Hearing

Mr. Bean, UK, Great Britain, censorship, mind control, authoritarianism

Twelve years ago, Rowan Atkinson of “Mr. Bean” fame took a stand against a law that criminalizes “insulting” speech. He was participating in a campaign to reform Section 5 of the Public Order Act of 1986.

In his remarks launching the campaign, recently resurrected on Twitter, Atkinson said that his concern was less for himself as a person with a high public profile than “for those more vulnerable because of their lower profile. Like the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay. Or the teenager arrested for calling the Church of Scientology a cult. Or the café owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.”

And what about the thousands of cases that “weren’t quite ludicrous enough to attract media attention? Even for those actions that were withdrawn, people were arrested, questioned, taken to court and then released.… That is censoriousness of the most intimidating kind.…”

And he said more than this. Luckily it’s recorded.

This effectively delivered argument, forceful and often funny, by a well-​known personality, had its effect. The Reform Section 5 campaign succeeded. The law was amended.

But the victory, though important, was narrow. And, since that win, sweeping assaults on speech that offends somebody or other continue in Britain, the United States, and other Western countries where people should know better than to emulate the censorship of authoritarian governments to which we aspire to provide an alternative. We’re going to need a lot more funny speeches.

Because this threat to freedom is so serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture international affairs

EU to Axe X?

Elon Musk, EU, European Union, censorship

Sandro Gozi, European Union parliament member, wants Elon Musk’s Twitter operation gone. Out of the European Union.

Not no matter what. Only if Twitter — “X” — keeps flouting the EU’s censorship rules.

Gozi says: “If Elon Musk does not comply with the European rules on digital services, the EU Commission will ask the continental operators to block X or, in the most extreme case, force them to completely dismantle the platform in the territory of the Union.”

Oh dear.

This threat comes right after EU official Thierry Breton’s threatening letter to Musk about his impending Twitter interview with Donald Trump. Musk told Breton to “[obscenity deleted]” and proceeded with the interview. Other EU arbiters of speech quickly dissociated themselves from Breton’s threat.

So maybe Gozi’s confidence about what fellow EU commissars will do if Musk does not play ball is misplaced. Perhaps the others will think about how Twitter users throughout Europe would react if their X accounts became “ex-” accounts.

Various Italian officials, Gozi’s countrymen, roundly repudiated his gabble.

“Silencing the voice of millions of people in order to strike out at those who think differently from them?” challenged Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. “Unacceptable and disturbing.”

The political party of Giorgia Meloni issued a statement saying that the “contemporary left [are] allergic to opinions that are not aligned with their mainstream, and inquisitors of anyone who does not submit to their suffocating cloak of conformism.”

Elon Musk likely sees the truth: this fight is winnable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Update

RFK & the “So Horrible”

“This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said on Friday. “But I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace, even in storms.”

What he was referring to was his decision to dissolve his campaign for the presidency and endorse Donald Trump. After holding a press conference on Friday, RFK appeared on stage at a Trump rally in Arizona.

There is a lot here to think about, and we are all chattering. But the BBC mentions something interesting: “Before welcoming RFK Jr to the stage on Friday, Trump promised, if elected, to release all remaining documents relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy.”

It is worth mentioning that Donald Trump had promised to fully de-​classify all the JFK assassination in his 2016 presidential campaign. But did not. Not fully.

Roger Stone, who has written a book on the subject, has discussed, many times, what we have learned so far from what Trump did release. (For instance, that Lee Oswald was an FBI informant who had gone to CIA language school to speak Russian.) But Trump did not release everything; “20 percent” he kept back. When Mr. Stone asked Trump why, Trump said he couldn’t. “It’s so horrible, you wouldn’t believe it,” is what Stone says Trump told him. (Judge Napolitano relates an almost identical explanation from Trump.)

Joe Biden, of course, did not release all of the remaining documents, as Stone relates. RFK Jr., now endorsing Trump, has a stake in the disclosures — his uncle being the subject of the whole issue, and his father (whom he believes was not killed by Sirhan Sirhan) was running for the presidency when he was himself assassinated, perhaps for being too close to obtaining information from The Files.

Maybe Bobby Kennedy’s deal with Trump was an assurance on full disclosure. After all, Trump — surviving a near miss from an assassin’s bullet — may now be more inclined to follow through. “So horrible” regardless.

We will see what happens.

See also past Common Sense columns on RFK Jr.: