Categories
First Amendment rights judiciary

Satire Censorship, DOA

In the endless battle to protect our freedom of speech, the forces for good can chalk up another victory, this one out in California.

The Golden State government has been trying to impose censorship on so-called “deep-fake” videos by forcing social-media platforms to find and eliminate “materially deceptive content” about incumbents and candidates. Platforms like Twitter-X and Rumble contend that the law would compel them to act as government censors.

Had a ban on “materially deceptive content” been imposed on TV networks, it might have wiped out most campaign commercials aired over the past 65 years.

But the deepfakes that California politicians want to censor are satirical. Example: a popular video of Kamala Harris talking about what a lightweight and unscrupulous politician she is. 

The bogosity of the video is obvious. 

Indeed,the effectiveness of such parody is what caused politicians like California Governor Newsom to hit the red-alert button.

A district judge, John Mendez, recently stated in court that since platforms are protected from being punished for third-party content under the Communications Decency Act, the California law seeking to punish platforms that fail to remove “deep-fake” political criticism on behalf of pusillanimous pols is dead on arrival.

Mendez has already blocked enforcement of the law throughout the state until he can issue a formal opinion.

“No parts of AB 2655 can be salvaged,”he explained. 

Judge Mendez also suggested that a related California censorship law targeting videos, AB 2839, is doomed because it violates First Amendment rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Categories
Thought

Fernand Braudel

Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion.

Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean (1949).
Categories
Today

Leclerc at Alençon

On August 12, 1944, French forces under General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque liberated Alençon from Nazi rule — the first city in World War II France to be rescued by the French themselves.

Categories
free trade & free markets regulation

Debanking Disallowed

President Trump has issued an executive order telling banking regulators to cut it out already.

The order, “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” takes aim at Biden-era regulations that pushed banks to “debank” clients who had the “wrong” political viewpoints: supporters of the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, or whatever aspect of individual rights and freedom the Biden administration was most insistently opposed to.

One key passage requires regulators to “remove the use of reputation risk or equivalent concepts that could result in politicized or unlawful debanking . . . from their guidance documents, manuals, and other materials . . . used to regulate or examine financial institutions over which they have jurisdiction. . . .”

The order also takes aim at banks. It requires regulators to identify financial institutions that have engaged or still engage in “politicized or unlawful” debanking practices and “to take appropriate remedial action” against the banks, including possibly “levying fines, issuing consent decrees, or imposing other disciplinary measures.”

Overall, the order represents a welcome 180 turnabout in very recent policy. The one problem I see, though, is that no clear attempt is made to distinguish between banks that were gung ho about clobbering politically unhip account holders and those that went no further than what they were pushed by Biden regulators to do.

Of course, one could always take a stand and do the right thing despite being threatened. Like the way the debanked individuals and institutions fought for what they believed in despite the risk of being debanked.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Thought

Herbert Spencer

If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems … self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.

Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics (1879).
Categories
Today

Vietnam

On August 11, 1972, the last of American ground combat troops exited South Vietnam.

Categories
Update

Col. John Mills on Russiagate

As Donald Trump tries to negotiate a peace in Ukraine — with the beleaguered country’s president balking at the current favored option of Putin and Trump (ceding thr Donbas to Russia) — an older Russia story is receiving updates. Russia Collusion!

Paul Jacob last covered the story late last month, in “One Dares Call It Collusion,” with Tulsi Gabbard releasing the intel data on “Russiagate” to the public. Now we are seeing a lot more of the evidence, with testimony of key figures.

Not Clapper or Brennan or Comey, mind you — they confess to nothing.

But the evidence against these past directors of the NSA, CIA, and FBI (respectively) appears to be mounting, and one bit of testimony, at least, is worth considering: “Two days after the election in 2016, I was called up on the NSA phone. The person said I had to be on the intelligence community assessment that was assembling to finalize the Russia narrative, because we were going to prove that Trump was a Russian asset, and we were going to delay or block the inauguration of Donald J. Trump for the first term.”

Also worth considering? This very same Col. John Mills’ perspective on Chinese (well, CCP) influence: “How the CCP and Its Proxies Created a ‘World on Fire’.”

Categories
Thought

Iris Murdoch

Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture. 

Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics (1997)
Categories
Today

Independence

On August 10, 1809, Ecuadorians attempted independence from Spain with the Declaration of Independence of Quito, but failed with the execution of all the conspirators a few days less than a year later.

Independence was finally achieved in 1822.

Categories
Update

Vax Whistleblower Treated Badly by NZ?

Fallout from the pandemic response of 2020-2023 continues to . . . fall out.

New Zealand’s “Royal Commission has been tasked with investigating the nation’s COVID-19 response,” wrote Frank Bergman a few weeks ago. “However, the body is facing intense criticism for ignoring key scientific data and creating a narrative that unquestioningly supports government policies and the ‘safety’ of mRNA ‘vaccines.’”

The southern hemisphere nation-state, when headed by quasi-repudiated former Prime Minister Jacinda Adern (pictured above), proved to be an enthusiastic enforcer of lockdowns and vaccination-by-novel-therapeutics. And has experienced an ominous post-pandemic rise in excess deaths (higher rates of mortality than is statistically expected). Still, the government does not seem eager to question public health practices.

The Commission received extensive briefings from groups like Voices for Freedom and New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out on Science (NZDSOS).

The briefings included peer-reviewed studies and official data.

Yet, the Commission has been accused of selectively referencing discredited claims to further its agenda.

In addition, the Commission was found to have ignored studies and data that highlighted the dangers associated with the mRNA shots.

Frank Bergman, “New Zealand Government Caught Covering Up Data Exposing Covid ‘Vaccine’ Deaths,” Slay News (July 28, 2025).

Officials stubbornly refuse to entertain alternative views or even data from other countries:

One of the most alarming aspects of the Commission’s handling of evidence is its refusal to consider the significant findings of international studies.

Most notably, the panel ignored a bombshell Japanese analysis of 21 million health records.

This study showed a disturbing rise in unexpected all-cause deaths following Covid mRNA injections.

The data shows that deaths spiked significantly after mRNA “booster” doses, with many occurring 90 to 120 days post-vaccination.

This timeline directly challenges the Commission’s stance that deaths need to occur shortly after vaccination to be linked causally.

Yet, this critical data was brushed aside during public hearings, further fueling the perception that the Commission is more interested in defending the status quo than genuinely investigating public health concerns.

Ibid.

The article goes on to mention the New Zealand government’s hostility to whistleblowers, Barry Young in particular. His story has been circulating again on social media this past week, so if you aren’t familiar with this controversy, brace yourself. He claims that his work as the sole healthcare database manager in New Zealand allowed him to notice (and expose) “a staggering 10 million deaths around the world” because of “vaccines”:

New Zealand’s case against Mr. Young — a database designer for a corporation under government contract, Te Whatu Ora — is dubious. He says he saw a pattern of results contrary to what the government was telling citizens and patients, and thus disclosed that information. The case against him is this: he is alleged also to have disclosed private information, too. That is what Sean Plunket, above, is so much exercised about.

While Te Whatu Ora claims that 12,000 individuals’ data was exposed, their statements are cautious, noting that the data “appears anonymised” but that there is a “small chance” some individuals could be identified.

The story is well-covered, if a tad one-sided in the media . . . in New Zealand. Happy Googling. (We recommend DuckDuckGo or Freespoke.)