Tag: censorship

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A Million from Michael Mann

Michael Mann, climate, free speech, censorship, courts

Things aren’t working out for Michael Mann. The infamous “climate scientist” has been pursuing a years-long vendetta against critics of his methods and conclusions, and it’s been a bumpy ride.

Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg accused him of manipulating data “in the service of politicized science.” Instead of answering the criticism, Mann treated it as actionably defamatory.

In 2012, Mann launched a lawsuit against Simberg (of the Competitive Enterprise) and Steyn (then writing for National Review).

National Review observes that the criticism which offended Mann “was obviously protected by the First Amendment,” so that his suit should have been scuttled immediately.

Instead, judges antagonistic to free speech when they find the speech uncongenial enabled Mann’s litigation to trundle on for years.

The story gets complicated, as touched upon a few months ago. In 2021, the tide seemed to be turning in favor of Steyn and Simberg, with a court issuing a favorable summary judgment. But in January 2024, a jury found Steyn and Simberg liable for defamation. The awards? Steyn was ordered to pay $1 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages, Simberg to pay $1 in compensatory damages and $1,000 in punitive damages.

That insane $1 million amount was later reduced to $5,000.

Now it is Mann taking the hit, with rulings that he must pay about a million bucks in legal fees to CEI and Rand Simberg ($477,350) and National Review ($530,820).

National Review urges Michael Mann to finally relinquish his authoritarian quest lest he lose even more. 

Will he? It would be irrational to continue, but it was irrational at the start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Antidemocracy in Maine

Maine, legislature, censorship, freedom of speech, representation,

Laurel Libby, a Republican state legislator in Maine, has been censured by Democrats in the Maine House of Representatives for a February 17 social media post in which she expressed disapproval of allowing “trans” girls (boys) to compete in high school sports for girls.

The alleged reason for the censure? Her post mentioned the winner of a girls’ track championship who is publicly known to be the winner and publicly known to be male.

Censuring Libby for stating her views would be bad enough. But the legislature went beyond putting its disapproval (or the Democratic majority’s disapproval) on record.

Representative Libby isn’t being allowed to speak as a representative during session. And she’s not being allowed to vote until she apologizes. 

For stating her views on a public question. 

Nor was she even allowed to defend herself when the House voted along party lines 75-70 to censure her.

This qualifies as tyranny, another mile down the slippery slope of eroding — or dynamiting — democratic norms and practices. The tyranny is not that of an autocrat but of the majority. In this case, the tyranny of a majority of partisans in a legislature.

It is also an attack on free speech. As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression observes, people elect representatives to “vote according to their conscience and express themselves freely on controversial topics.”

Rightly, Laurel Libby has refused to remove the Facebook post criticizing the policy of the Maine Principals’ Association. Wrongly, her constituents continue to be deprived of her voice and vote in the legislature.

She is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to redress this injustice. Let it act, and fast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs media and media people

Europe, Land of the Free?

Europe, censorship, mind control, freedom, government

The Economist has declared Europe the Land of the Free.

One proof is that in Europe, no tech oligarchs are “spending their weekends feeding bits of the state ‘into the wood chipper.’”

This is an ill-considered allusion to the efforts of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the bloat and fraud in U.S. government spending. And the trillions in U.S. federal debt. Which are unsustainable. Because magic doesn’t work.

“Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice.” 

In Britain you can be arrested or jailed for praying, tweeting a wrong-thinking tweet, reading from the Bible, holding up street signs.

Nor is freedom of speech safe in Germany. To prove the continent’s theoretical and practical freedom of speech, The Economist piles up carefully unelucidated half-truths but declines to cite, for example, the conviction of German journalist David Bendels.

In February, Bendels, the editor in chief of Deutschland-Kurier, published a satirical post slamming a German minister, Nancy Faeser, for opposing freedom of speech. An obviously doctored photo showed Faeser with a sign saying “I hate freedom of speech.” Faeser, who loves freedom of speech, filed a criminal complaint after being alerted by German police, who also love freedom of speech.

Bendels has been fined 1,500 pounds, given a suspended prison sentence of seven months, and ordered to apologize. 

He is appealing the verdict, and others are fighting the law under which he was prosecuted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs Internet controversy social media

X Marks the Censor

EU, censorship, Elon Musk, X, VPN

The European Union’s censors are outraged that Elon Musk’s social media platform, Twitter-X, flouts their demands to gag users.

So they’re gearing up to fine X more than a billion dollars. The EU will also be demanding “product changes.”

Another EU investigation reported by The New York Times “is broader and . . . could lead to further penalties,” but amounts to the same thing: punishing Musk’s free-speech company for disobeying orders to prevent and punish speech.

All this is rationalized by a new EU law to compel social media platforms to police users. One would be hard put to find a clearer case of governmental censorship-by-delegation. It’s not even taking place behind closed doors, as was the case regarding the U.S. Government and Twitter before Mr. Musk bought the platform. 

These European censors brag about it.

X says it will do its best to “protect freedom of speech in Europe.”

If push comes to shove and EU goons do not back down, what X should do has been indicated by the smaller platforms social media platforms Gab and Kiwi Farms.

First, refuse to pay a penny of any imposed fine. 

Second, block access to X within the European Union, advising all account holders who try to log on why having an EU IP address is now a bad idea and why using a good virtual private network (VPN) to access X is now a good idea.

By disguising point of origin and encrypting traffic, a good VPN can help people living under tyrannical regimes like the European Union to evade censorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Against British Censorship

U.K. British, censorship

The dictates of the neo-redcoat British government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, are out of control.

Starmer’s Labour government wants the whole world to obey its censorship demands. The latest is that its Office of Communications, called Ofcom, is threatening the American social media platforms Gab and Kiwi Farms with mega-steep fines for unwaveringly safeguarding the freedom of speech of users. 

Which of course Gab and Kiwi Farms have every right to do.

Ofcom says it’ll sock Gab with fines of up $23 million USD for refusing to censor its users per UK orders. 

“We will not pay one cent,” says Gab CEO Andrew Torba.

Gab is not only not cooperating with Ofconjob’s insanity, it has also reported the Starmer government to the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Department of Justice in hopes that the U.S. government will retaliate against the United Kingdom for trying to gag social media in the United States.

Kiwi Farms, threatened with the same fine of up to 10 percent of worldwide revenue, is telling UK users who want to use the site to access it through a VPN or Tor in order to protect their online traffic and disguise which country they’re from. Otherwise, they’re out of luck.

Kiwi has also reported success in obtaining pro bono counsel for dealing with “the UK’s attempts to enforce its censorship regime in the United States.”

As the U.S. president famously said in Butler, Pennsylvania: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights insider corruption

The Biden’s Four Ways

Joe Biden, censorship, mind control, obey, obedience, free speech

In response to controversies about pandemics, elections, and whatnot, Congress did not quite pass — nor President Biden quite sign — a new law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. (As far as I know.)

Biden’s government did act, regardless, with the force of law to shut people up. According to the Media Research Center’s new report on Biden censorship — ready to be shared with all who contend that his administration perfectly respected our freedom of speech — the cabal I call The Biden censored Americans using four approaches:

Direct action. For example, ordering a big tech firm or a judge to censor somebody. White house advisors, agency bureaucrats, and others exerted this kind of pressure.

Policy or rulemaking. Examples include the State Department’s agreement with foreign nations “to pressure Tech platforms to censor more” and Homeland Security’s attempt to create a Disinformation Governance Board to police speech.

Partnerships with state and private actors to censor speech. Biden’s National Security Council collaborated with the UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit to impose UK censorship on Americans.

Grants to organizations to attack and flag utterance of incorrect speech, which the government could then censor.

These were effectuated, by MRC’s count, with 57 initiatives.

As soon as he began his second term, President Trump issued executive orders to combat such muzzling of debate. Congress must do its part too.

No matter what defenses are put in place, though, we will see further attempts by government goons to gag us. We must be vigilant.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

Charges Aborted

Can people now report on controversial subjects without being targeted by California officials? 

At least for the next four years?

David Daleiden has announced on X that the charges against him and Sandra Merritt for reporting on Planned Parenthood’s alleged sale of the body parts of aborted fetuses have now been dropped. Daleiden’s no-contest plea, “which cannot be used adversely” against him, will be “entered into judgement as a misdemeanor . . . then converted into a ‘not guilty’ plea and dismissed.”

Why all the rigmarole instead of dismissing the charges fully and immediately?

Blame the sulking psyches of California poohbahs and jacks-in-office, who may have felt pressured to unload the case because of the regime change in Washington. It seems that President Trump nominated Harmeet Dhillon, who has represented Daleiden and Meritt, to help lead the Civil Rights Division of DOJ.

Charges of filming people without permission — in the kind of sting operation that still happens quite often without anybody getting arrested for it — had been brought against Daleiden and Merritt in 2017 by California’s attorney general at the time, Xavier Becerra. This prosecution was based on an investigation launched by one Kamala Harris.

The supposed crime was the recording, in 2015, of interviews with Planned Parenthood personnel by members of the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress. Daleiden is CMP’s founder.

Now, with the charges gone, Daleiden and CMP can focus on their work, which he describes as reporting on “the injustices of taxpayer-funded experiments on aborted babies.”

A work that their prosecutors obviously wished to forestall.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

A Free Speech Order

“Will President Trump be a free speech president?”

On January 21, David Keating, president of Institute for Free Speech, asked this question. And he refers the reader to his Wall Street Journal op-ed published last month in which he offered suggestions about how to stop the federal government from censoring people via social media or in other ways.

The new president sure seemed to get off to a good start restoring the First Amendment. One of his thirty or so executive orders signed on the 20th, his first work day, is entitled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

Section 2 says that it is U.S. policy to “secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech,” ensure that no federal employee or agent “engages in or facilitates” unconstitutional abridgement of speech, and “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

Section 3 says no federal employee or department may act in a manner inconsistent with Section 2.

Maybe this broad order needs to be supplemented with many more specific orders that say: Really. Don’t engage in censorship here or there or anywhere.

This is where specific suggestions like Mr. Keating’s come in handy, such as preventing the IRS from penalizing taxpayers for criticizing political candidates, repealing SEC limits on political donations, and instituting specific regulations to “force disclosure of most government contacts with social-media organizations asking to take down third-party posts,” thereby scuttling most future such contacts.

It’s a start. Let’s keep going.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media too much government

When Is Censorship Not Censorship?

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, censorship

Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is returning to its free speech roots.

Can we believe him?

While the restrictions on what you can talk about on Facebook are still pretty extensive, Zuckerberg’s outfit, Meta, is apparently ending the reign of “fact-checkers” on Facebook and Instagram, as well as the platforms’ collusion with federal government “fact-checkers.”

On Monday, I discussed the federal government’s screaming fits that led Facebook to ramp up “content moderation,” which I identified with a less euphemistic c-word. But that word choice remains controversial. For example, a “global network of fact-checking organizations,” the International Fact-Checking Network, which includes Agence France Presse, objects to Zuckerberg’s assumption that Meta helped impose censorship.

“This is false, and we want to set the record straight, both for today’s context and for the historical record,” announced IFCN. The Network then “warned of the potentially devastating impact if the group were to end its worldwide programs. . . .”

If censoring in obedience to government demands is not censorship, what could be? The article doesn’t explain. AFP and IFCN are simply saying that they don’t want freedom of speech; it’s dangerous.

Of course, free speech can have costs. 

But censorship does too: suppression of truth and impeding the means of learning truth. 

The article doesn’t report on the costs of suppressing facts about, say, COVID-19, vaccines, U.S. policy, UFOs, or Hunter Biden’s laptop.

AFP and IFCN simply assume that gatekeepers like themselves, with a vested interest in excluding divergent reports and viewpoints, must be allowed to keep excluding differing views and inconvenient facts from the “safe spaces” that apparently include all the very biggest spaces on the Internet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Defi(l)ers of the First Amendment

free speech, censorship, corporations

Early on, we carefully phrased our objections to the suppressions of dissident opinion on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. 

We knew (because we had been making the distinction for years) that when companies and private parties engaged in discrimination on the basis of opinion, including “de-platforming” of opinion-mongers, these weren’t, at least on the face of it, First Amendment violations. The First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech apply to the federal government and, by the stretch of the 14th Amendment, to state and local governments.

These were corporations.

Sure, corporations thriving under government liability rules, and with sometimes-cushy contracts with government.

And social media companies’ actions were clearly partisan, obviously opposing Donald Trump. The dreaded Orange Man had used social media to get elected in 2016, running rings around the gatekeepers of Accepted Opinion; the ultra-partisan censorship a reaction.

Only with the release of the Twitter Files, after Elon Musk bought Twitter, did we get the crucial facts in the case: Agents of the U.S. government (many of them eerily in the Deep State nexus) pushed the censorship.

Now, with Mark Zuckerberg’s very recent and very public pulling back from the excesses of DEI as well as government-coerced content moderation, we’ve learned more of the manner of the duress in which his companies caved to censorship demands. Government agents called up Facebook managers and content moderators and screamed at them to suppress certain stories and “memes.”

The sharing of visual memes really, really bugged the Deep State, which was hell bent on delivering to everybody a jab in the muscle with gene therapeutics allegedly to “vaccinate” us against a disease that . . . well, their buddies in the Deep State helped China, it just so happened, create. 

Worldwide, millions died in a pandemic whose origin was actively covered up through violations of the First Amendment in America. 

Defend free speech to defend life itself. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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