Tag: censorship

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First Amendment rights insider corruption national politics & policies

Hillary Disinformation Hunt

Hillary Clinton, disinformation, censorship, mind control, thought control

Have you heard? It’s open season on disinformation.

Disinformation spewed by Hillary Clinton, that is.

Mrs. Clinton has escaped jail time for all her previous crimes, whether committed singly or in partnership with her husband. But now we are going to have a brand-new crime to charge her with. And boy, is she a serial offender!!!!!!

The irony is, we would not even be able to charge anybody with this new category of crime — if indeed we’ll be able to; there’s still some controversy about it — but for the contempt of Hillary Clinton and politicians like her for the First Amendment rights that a large minority of Americans hold so dear.

Hillary Clinton, on MSNBC: “I think it’s important to indict the Russians . . . who were engaged in direct election interference. . . . But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda, and whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrent.”

Yes, Hillary Clinton “got away with” everything else. But can she get away with all her lies and, let’s face it, downright disinformation, certainly heavily disseminated by her around election times? 

Heck, even if the new category of criminal offense won’t be applicable retroactively, thus giving her a free pass for the last umpteen years, are we in any danger of running out of actionable Hillary disinformation going forward? Does a leopard change its spots?

Maybe she’s counting on selective enforcement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people political challengers social media

The Ignorance of Censorship

Covid, censorship, surveillance, PSYOP, mind control

Why is Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, governor of Minnesota right now?

Perhaps because government censors — functioning through agents like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook — made it harder to hear his opponent, Dr. Scott Jensen, during Walz’s 2022 re-election campaign.

A shift in a few percentage points would have tilted things in the challenger’s favor. But Jensen had made the government’s response to the pandemic — including the tyrannical policies of Walz’s state government — a central theme of his campaign.

And in those days (as in these), all-out censorship of various deviations from the government line was de rigueur. Disagreement about COVID-19, both the nature of the infection and the wisdom of the government’s response, was among the targets.

Jeffrey Tucker asks “Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess” to the fact that Facebook had done so little, in Zuckerberg’s words, to resist repeated pressure “from the Biden administration, including the White House . . . to censor certain COVID-19 content”?

The answer to the uninteresting question “why now?” is standard CYApolitical calculus. In any case, the confession isn’t quite exhaustive; Zuckerberg doesn’t acknowledge the extent of the censorship. As Tucker notes, “every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels.”

The single COVID-contrarian piece by Tucker himself that slipped through the social-media censorship net “by mistake” got an atypical tsunami of response. So what if Dr. Jensen’s message and arguments had not been perpetually smothered by government-pressured social-media companies?

Jensen may still have lost (Walz got 52 percent) but the point of elections goes further than a horse race. Where there is free speech, voters can learn something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Say No to Reich-Harris Reich

Kamala Harris, Robert Reich, censorship, X, Twitter, mind control, free speech

Freedom of speech is constantly embattled.

Just one example: government-instigated stomping on social-media speech in recent years, proof of which has been revealed thanks to litigation, freedom of information requests, and the purchase of Twitter by a friend of free speech.

But the embarrassing revelations have not caused our censors to retreat.

They’re not trying to censor people, they suggest, just trying to stop lies, hate, misinformation. And now Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, wants to arrest Elon Musk for resisting censorship as Twitter’s new owner.

Reich says: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.”

Reich has also said that we must regulate speech to “direct people’s attention . . . to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.” As Jonathan Turley observes, “the ‘healthy public conversation’ with Robert Reich increasingly appears to be his talking and the rest of us listening.”

Would “regulators around the world” include U.S. regulators? Since the First Amendment has yet to be rescinded, perhaps Reich would prefer other countries to handle imprisoning Elon Musk for letting people speak “too” freely. But I’m guessing Reich would be fine with a U.S. arrest.

Reich would fit right in with a Harris administration, if we get one, led by a woman who calls the First Amendment a “privilege” and has lamented that social media sites are “directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight and regulation.” Which, she declares, “has to stop.”

Something has to stop.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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First Amendment rights too much government

Deep State in a Corner

deep state, censorship, mind control, PSYOP, CIA

Once upon a time, the CIA and allied agencies pushed free speech as a norm. 

Overseas.

The rationale? Without some free speech and press rights, it was too hard to organize a populace to overthrow their government. Our spooks exported freedom of speech abroad not because they were so gung-ho American; it was all about seeding revolutions.

But not here! 

The CIA couldn’t let others take advantage of American free speech like its agents leveraged free speech abroad. A change in government might mean . . . loss of jobs. Mission. Money.

What to do? Disinform at home. By corrupting journalism.

The Operation Mockingbird efforts in the 1960s helped intel insiders control information and manage “the consent of the governed,” and these early efforts grew into the close ties between the Deep State and credentialed journalists today. 

The connections, I’m told are many: it’s not just Anderson Cooper’s internship at the CIA. 

During the Cold War, the disinformation element found a plausible justification. Then, the Soviets had us at a disadvantage: we had trouble extracting reliable information from within the Iron Curtain, but they could grab all sorts of useful information from our open, comparatively free speech realm.

Disinformation: a strategic necessity. But the consequences?

 “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete,” William Casey explained to President Ronald Reagan, “when everything the American public believes is false.”

In the early days of the Internet, the Deep State pushed online speech platforms, the better to allow for foreign coups. Is there a social media space that hasn’t received surreptitious government subsidy? It’s hard to be sure. We’re supposed to assume our government protects us rather than controls us. 

But, increasingly, Internet-connected Americans see government officials chiefly as manipulators.

Which is why the Deep State’s most ardent partisans (neocons; Democrats; plutocrats) now routinely attack free speech here, and why allies overseas are so thoroughly cracking down on “de-stabilizing” opinions. It’s why Rumble is no longer available in Brazil and why Musk is pulling out Twitter personnel . . . and why France has arrested the CEO of Telegram.

Us catching on to the psy-op game places the Deep State in a corner. All the disinformation agents have left is censorship and repression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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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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Elon Musk’s Right Answer

Elon Musk, censorship, EU, free speech, democracy

“By the rules of the complicated pretense which all those people played for one another’s benefit, they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly; there should have been rustles of astonishment and derision; there were none; they sat still; they understood.”

These words are from a scene in Atlas Shrugged in which beleaguered industrialist Hank Rearden rejects “this court’s right to try me” and refuses to put on a defense. Thereby giving the best defense of all.

Elon Musk didn’t give a speech.

Instead, when an EU muck-a-muck, Thierry Breton, sent him a letter on the eve of Musk’s Twitter interview with presidential candidate Donald Trump, a letter babbling about dire consequences for Twitter if it were to “amplify potentially harmful content [i.e., any deviation from current government dogma] in connection with events with major audience around the world,” Musk responded with a quote and a clip from the movie Tropic Thunder.

Other EU officials are now rushing to disavow Breton’s letter, widely castigated as an attempt to interfere with the U.S. election.

I can’t repeat the line Musk quoted, because we don’t use cuss words here. If you don’t like to hear such words, don’t click into the video clip. Just don’t go there.

Mega-magnate Elon Musk is often badly wrong about China. But when he’s right, he’s right. Even super right. 

And we need a million more CEOs to be thus willing to stand up to regulators foreign and domestic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture Second Amendment rights

Another Disability for Paralympians

Olympics, shooting, guns, Instagram

The Paralympic Games, being held this year from August 28 to September 8, in Paris, are a “major international sports competition for athletes with disabilities.”  

We should cheer their efforts — not undermine them.

Meta’s Instagram apparently disagrees. In mid-July, Instagram restricted the account of McKenna Geer, member of the American shooting team, so that it could be viewed only by current followers.

The “problem” seemed to be that she had posted photos of herself in competition. With firearms. For similar reasons, Instagram has also censored the accounts of other athletes. (Skittishness about pics of guns may be why an Olympics.com photo of an Indian athlete “shooting” shows only head and arm.)

When the restrictions were imposed, Geer observed that she and other athletes use social media to spread the word about their sport and firearm safety, “build our personal brand, and connect with potential sponsors.” Her livelihood and ability to continue shooting competitively were thus at stake.

Geer’s Instagram account is again accessible to non-followers. But the problem has not been resolved permanently. As aaronalvarado asserted at her account, “a bad AI program with no monitoring” may be to blame. “We appeal and the program shadow-bans everything.”

If so, at least a human being is not consciously choosing to censor Geer or other athletes because they shoot competitively. But somebody wrote the programming. And Meta must be aware of these problems. 

It’s time to remove the “guns bad, context irrelevant” line of code.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access election law insider corruption partisanship

Degrading Democracy, CNN-Style

watchdog, guard dog, media, press, newspapers

Everyone’s talking about last month’s CNN debate. We can’t unsee President Biden’s performance.

But something else did go unseen: candidates independent of the two dominant parties — specifically, RFK, Jr.

“CNN RULES WOULD HAVE BARRED EVERY INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE FOR LAST 112 YEARS,” read this month’s Ballot Access News (BAN) cover story.

Wow. That’s a long time.

Self-deputized to supposedly defend “democracy,” CNN sponsored the recent presidential debate using criteria pointedly designed to shut out independent voices — even those polling double digits.

The main culprit was their mandate that “the candidate must [be] certified for the ballot in states with at least 270 electoral votes, by June 20.”

That doesn’t make any sense given the calendar for ballot qualification. As BAN relates, “The rule about being on the ballot was probably written by individuals who had no knowledge of the typical time-line for presidential candidates running as independents, or nominees of new parties.”

Plus, “the rule” was applied with a double standard — one for Republicans and Democrats and another for other parties and independents.

“They require certainty for the independent candidate to show ballot placement,” notes BAN, “but they only require probability for the Democratic and Republican invitees.”

Once upon a time major news outlets were seen as playing a vital watchdog role, as referees, politically. Today, CNN and its ilk require their own umpires, a whole new set of watchdogs.

We are it — all of us on X, Facebook, podcasts and the blogosphere — we are those watchdogs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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