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Cooperate when you think everyone involved will benefit.

Compete when you think something needs improvement.

For too long, certain states have been cooperating with the federal government without any benefit to the state or the citizens who live there. I recently highlighted five states, in particular, that would be better off as countries, without the federal government controlling them, and leaching off them.

Instead, states should be competing against the federal government.

They should be solving problems that the federal government cannot, or will not, solve.

One of America’s biggest problems is a fiat currency which has lost 85% of its value since 1971 when Nixon eliminated the gold standard.

Yesterday I discussed one possible solution. States could create or incentivize banks that safely store deposits of gold and silver, and issue a digital representation of its value. The value would not be denominated in dollars. Instead, the precious metals themselves would be indexed to purchasing power.

The banks would make money in the same way banks currently do, by lending and charging interest.

States could incentivize the use of this real money by giving discounts to anyone who paid their taxes with this new digital metal-backed money.

And the state’s incentive to do this is to cushion an economic crisis triggered by massive debt, inflation, and loss of confidence in value the US dollar.

But one possible pitfall of this system is a shortage of physical gold or silver to deposit, thus creating excess demand, and driving the price of gold and silver up.

So here’s another alternative.

State Cryptocurrency

You know the golden rule–he who has the gold makes the rules.

If states position themselves right, they can avert financial disaster when DC’s luck finally runs out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

October 17, 2018

Big Tech Has Performed the “Greatest Bait-and-Switch in American History” As It Now Turns On Free Speech

Big tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have performed “perhaps the greatest bait-and-switch in American history” as they now have committed to an about-face to the American value of free speech.

That is the assessment of Breitbart New‘s Allum Bokhari who exclusively presented a leaked Google internal briefing titled “The Good Censor” to the public on October 9th, exposing the world once again to major tech companies’ attitude towards the bedrock of traditional American attitude.

“The Good Censor” is an 85-page briefing that openly admits that Google and other tech platforms are undertaking a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world. Unsurprisingly – especially afterleaked video showed google employees in an emotional meltdown after the election victory of Donald J. Trump – The Good Censor cites the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the rise of the populist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany as unwelcomed events.

While admitting the shift away from free speech it is also simultaneously admitted that those select few giants “control the majority of online conversations.”

The briefing goes into how Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are stuck in a position of going along with the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” (free speech and free markets) vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” (censorship). These two directions are also described as the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility” and the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The internal pages claim that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.

Perhaps the most significant part of the brief, as Breitbart’s Bokhari reports, is when it associates Google’s new role as the guarantor of “civility” with the categories of “editor” and “publisher.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facebook Is An Intolerant Authoritarian Organization That Suppresses Free Speech

September 2, 2018

Facebook Is An Intolerant Authoritarian Organization That Suppresses Free Speech

Facebook, Twitter, Google are information monopolies that intentionally violate the US Constitution’s protected First Amendment right. These organizations are evil and they are destroying the public’s right to know. These organizations should be nationalized without compensation and put under the governance of known and committed defenders of the First Amendment. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are inconsistent with a free society. They are functionaries in Big Brother’s police state.

If an investigative journalist looked into these organizations, I believe many links to the CIA and deep state would be found.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/technology/inside-facebook-employees-political-bias.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/30/facebook-engineer-stunning-admission-we-tear-down-posters-welcoming-trump-supporters.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/31/facebook-censorship-mad-ben-nimmo-and-atlantic-council.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/29/social-media-giants-enter-nato-service.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/27/facebook-kills-inauthentic-foreign-news-accounts-us-propaganda-stays-alive.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/14/four-person-nato-funded-team-advises-facebook-flagging-propaganda.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/05/24/facebook-partners-with-hawkish-atlantic-council-nato-lobby-group-protect-democracy.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/30/how-facebook-etc.-suppress-key-truths.html

Apple, Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter Subvert the US Constitution, Free Speech, and American Liberty

August 8, 2018

Apple, Google, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter Subvert the US Constitution, Free Speech, and American Liberty

The coordinated attack on widely watched Info Wars host Alex Jones by Apple, Facebook, Google/Youtube, and Spotify is all the proof that we need that the total failure to enforce America’s anti-trust laws has produced unaccountably powerful firms that are able to exercise far more censorship, not only in America but also abroad among Washington’s vassal states, than the Nazi Gestapo or Stalin’s NKVD were ever able to achieve.

Recently the progressive Rob Kall and I discussed on his show the implications of a trillion dollar company, which Apple now is. A day or two afterward, Rob Kall wrote an article on his website OpEdNews in which he made a case that a trillion dollar company had too much power for our continuation as a free people. I agree with him. Only 16 countries out of 195 countries in the world, a mere 0.08 percent, have a GDP equal to or larger than one trillion dollars.

Think about that. Apple is larger than the GNP of almost every country in the world. In other words, Apple has the power of a major government. Apple could be a member of the G-20. Apple could institute its own currency and be part of SDR drawing rights. Apple could participate as a backer of IMF and World Bank loans. Apple could have its own military and secret service.

No sooner than Rob Kall made his case than Apple proved it, along with the other tech monopolies: Google/Youtube, Spotify, and Facebook. https://www.rt.com/usa/435259-infowars-ban-twitter-reacts/

In the US almost everything has been monopolized—the digital world; 90% of the print and TV media owned by 5 or 6 companies; 90% of bank deposits in 5 large banks “too big to fail; Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes which have abolished independent community family stores; auto parts franchises that have abolished family businesses; restuarant franchises that have destroyed family restaurants; pharmacautical and chemical monopolies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

CA Judge: Twitter Can Be Sued For Falsely Advertising They Allow Free Speech

June 19, 2018

CA Judge: Twitter Can Be Sued For Falsely Advertising They Allow Free Speech

A California judge has ruled that social media giant Twitter can be sued for falsely advertising free speech. The judge said that Twitter’s policy of banning users “at any time, for any reason or for no reason” may constitute an “unconscionable contract” for a company which advertises free speech.

The judge rejected Twitter’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit from Jared Taylor, who was banned by the platform in December last year, according to Breitbart. Taylor, a self-described “white activist” may proceed with his lawsuit against Twitter because the social media company falsely advertises free speech, yet bans users for “any or no reason.” The judge also ruled that Twitter could be sued on the basis of misleading its users, due to the platform’s promise not to ban accounts on the basis of viewpoint or political affiliation, which is frequently violated.

“This ruling has massive implications for the platform going forward,” said Noah Peters, Jared Taylor’s lawyer. “this is the first time that a social media company’s argument that it can censor user speech has been rejected by a court.”

Taylor describes himself as a “race realist” and has defended white separatism, claiming that races are “not equal”, but his attorney says this trial is not about his client’s particular views, and that’s a correct assessment. The trial is about Twitter’s disallowance of free speech although they use that term to advertise the social media platform.

“Our lawsuit is not about whether Taylor is right or wrong,” Peters said in February.“It’s about whether Twitter and other technology companies have the right to ban individuals from using their services based on their perceived viewpoints and affiliations.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Great Britain has become an Orwellian, globalist police state. Once the land of the Magna Carta, it’s now the land of tyranny.

May 30, 2018

Great Britain has become an Orwellian, globalist police state. Once the land of the Magna Carta, it’s now the land of tyranny.

Free speech is gone–the imprisonment of Tommy Robinson proves that. There was no legitimate charge, no trial, no due process. Instead, he was disappeared into jail where death threatens him. Remember, an anti-Muslim Englander was imprisoned for a year for leaving a bacon sandwich near a mosque. He was murdered while locked up. The same threat looms for Robinson. The media are not allowed to talk about it. It’s the ‘law.’

Robinson is a whistleblower who cast light on a huge problem in his country: Muslim pedophile rape gangs. Apparently Muslims are a protected caste and so Robinson was arrested and locked up. He was on parole and the British authorities were determined to lock him up again on any pretense. They said he was a ‘threat to the peace,’ which is ridiculous.

What’s next, England—people getting ‘disappeared’ into gulags or the being shot in the back of the head, Stalin-style? It’s good to see many patriotic citizens in England protesting Robinson’s arrest. Unfortunately, they’ve all been disarmed. Let that reinforce a lesson for us Americans: Never, ever give up your guns. If our government ignores our Constitutional rights and tries to ‘disappear’ us into prison camps, we’ll know what to do. Remember the words of Solzhenitsyn:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New California Bill Would ELIMINATE Free Speech, Require ‘Online Fact Checkers’

April 11, 2018

New California Bill Would ELIMINATE Free Speech, Require ‘Online Fact Checkers’

California Senator Richard Pan, the infamous fascist who forced a mandatory vaccination law through in order to rake in money from big pharma, has decided there should no longer be free speech for anyone other than the government. Pan’s new bill proposes to require “online fact checkers” to verify content before anything can be posted on the internet.

Anyone who has ever said tyranny cannot come to America has been proven wrong. Pan’s new bill would basically outlaw questioning the government’s official narrative, and is reminiscent of the book burning days of Nazi Germany. The bill supposedly only targets social media in California, but as Jon Rappaport points out, once you read the bill, it applies to the whole of the internet.

This isn’t some sort of prank either. The leftists in power are getting desperate in their attempt to control information and produce propaganda and this is just more evidence of such. We experienced evidence of this yesterday when SHTFPlanreported that the Department of Homeland Security has been instructed to compile a database of all journalists and online “media influencers.”

But that’s all beginning now, here, in the “land of the free.” Last week, SHTFPlan interviewed Sarah Leach who was detained without charges for survivalist posts on her own Facebook page. But we are expected to believe that DHS has no nefarious reasoning for compiling a list of all journalists, bloggers, podcasters, or as they like to call them: “media influencers”?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tolerance Cuts Both Ways: Freedom for the Speech We Hate

March 24, 2018

Tolerance Cuts Both Ways: Freedom for the Speech We Hate

Tolerance cuts both ways.

This isn’t an easy pill to swallow, I know, but that’s the way free speech works, especially when it comes to tolerating speech that we hate.

The most controversial issues of our day—gay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

“Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.

This haphazard approach to the First Amendment has so muddied the waters that even First Amendment scholars are finding it hard to navigate at times.

It’s really not that hard.

The First Amendment affirms the right of the people to speak freely, worship freely, peaceably assemble, petition the government for a redress of grievances, and have a free press.

Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone’s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, insulating judges from undue influence, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.

Unfortunately, in the war being waged between free speech purists who believe that free speech is an inalienable right and those who believe that free speech is a mere privilege to be granted only under certain conditions, the censors are winning.

We have entered into an egotistical, insulated, narcissistic era in which free speech has become regulated speech: to be celebrated when it reflects the values of the majority and tolerated otherwise, unless it moves so far beyond our political, religious and socio-economic comfort zones as to be rendered dangerous and unacceptable.

Indeed, President Trump—who has been accused of using his very public platform to belittle and mock his critics and enemies while attempting to muzzle those who might speak out against him—may be the perfect poster child for this age of intolerance.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The “Fake News” Crusade to “Protect” You from Free Speech

February 2, 2018

The “Fake News” Crusade to “Protect” You from Free Speech

Even if judgements against some of these websites might be overturned in courts, doing so is clearly an enormous financial burden, as the would-be censors doubtless know. But what a handy way not to have one’s policies questioned — especially, one assumes, during elections.
Attempts to censor “competing narratives” is probably just a tip-off that certain individuals are afraid their political ideas will be unable to withstand the questions asked or the test of time.
“If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society.” — Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” George Orwell wrote in his ant-totalitarian novel, 1984. He would probably have frowned upon the latest UK Government blueprint to create a regulatory agency that will ultimately strangle freedom of expression.

Scrutiny against “Fake News,” is undoubtedly a positive development. It means that at least people are questioning the news they are consuming. Yes, it is a problem that so much disinformation and misinformation exists. It is, however, a far bigger problem if they do not. The public’s resolve should be that disinformation is not combated by a regulatory body controlled by Government. Individual arguments, with evidence, is what belongs in a democracy, which can only survive if it is a marketplace of ideas.

If having a Government body decide what can and cannot be published – thereby creating a culture of both official censorship and self-censorship — is not enough to concern you, the briefest glance at what this newly created British body would consider “Fake News” should send you running into the street.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Spanish Government Uses Hate Speech Law To Arrest Critic Of The Spanish Government

January 30, 2018

Spanish Government Uses Hate Speech Law To Arrest Critic Of The Spanish Government

from the shocked-SHOCKED-to-find-such-a-predictable-use-of-a-bad-law dept

Spain’s government has gotten into the business of regulating speech with predictably awful results. An early adopter of Blues Lives Matter-esque policies, Spain went full police state, passing a law making it a crime to show “disrespect” to law enforcement officers. The predictable result? The arrest of someone for calling cops “slackers” in a Facebook post.

Spain’s government is either woefully unaware of the negative consequences of laws like this or, worse, likes the negative consequences. After all, it doesn’t hurt Spain’s government beyond a little reputational damage. It only hurts residents of Spain. When you’re already unpopular, thanks to laws like these and suppression of a Catalan independence vote, what difference does it make if you’re known better for shutting down dissent than actually protecting citizens from hateful speech?

One Catalan resident is getting the full “hate speech” rap-and-ride.

A Catalan high school teacher, Manel Riu, appeared in court on Thursday accused of hate speech for his tweets and Facebook posts criticizing Spain, government members and the Guardia Civil police. Over a hundred people escorted him to court in Tremp, west of Catalonia, where he denied any wrongdoing and asked for the case’s dismissal.

As a Catalan, Riu certainly has reason to criticize the Spanish government. During the last attempted referendum, the Spanish government sent police to seize ballots, voters’ cellphones, and ordered Google to remove a voting location app from the Play store. The evidence against Riu is composed of 119 tweets gathered by the Guardia Civil, Spain’s oldest law enforcement agency — one that blurs the line between playing soldier and playing cop far more often than its US counterparts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Macron Is Using the “Fake News” Excuse to Attack Press Freedom

January 19, 2018

Macron Is Using the “Fake News” Excuse to Attack Press Freedom

Only on the free market of ideas can information be checked and double-checked.

In press statements for the beginning of this year, French president Emmanuel Macron announced his plans for cracking down on fake news. Haunted by the controversial Macron Leaks towards the end of the presidential campaign (which he won in May last year), the new French president was expected to go after the practice early in his term. The accuracy of the online information flow is important, but Macron’s solutions are seriously worrying.

Macron’s Aim

In the press conference, Emmanuel Macron announced that restricting the presence of fake news online was essential to French democracy, andadded:

“As you know, propagating fake news on social media these days only demands a couple of tens of thousands of euros, and can be done while remaining completely anonymous.”

While it is true that you can spend tens of thousands of euros, fake news can easily be spread with no money whatsoever. All it takes on social media is for a post to go viral, in which case there is no need to sponsor the posts at all.

In order to achieve better public information, Macron wants to make transparency about who operates and runs news websites compulsory (if it sponsors content on social media), and give judges the possibility to completely delete content. His proposed bill will only apply for election periods, during which he says that public opinion should be fuelled by facts, not false information. This restriction was due to the “#MacronLeaks” which happened shortly before the second round of France’s presidential election in May last year. Thousands of emails of Macron’s staffers had been leaked on 4Chan and led to wild accusations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

French President Macron Demands Anti-Fake-News Law “To Protect Democracy”

January 3, 2018

French President Macron Demands Anti-Fake-News Law “To Protect Democracy”

Following Germany’s (and Brussels) lead to tyrannical repression of any free speech in Europe, French President Macron said on Wednesday he would overhaul French media legislation this year to fight the spread of “fake news.”

As Reuters reports, since he was elected last year, Macron has criticized Russian media in particular, openly accusing TV channel RT of sowing disinformation about him via its website and social media during the presidential election.

“If we want to protect liberal democracies, we must have strong legislation,” Macron told a news conference.

Macron said the legislation would concern social media platforms, especially during election periods, and deeply change the role of France’s media watchdog CSA.

One can’t help but read Macron’s quote and think Orwellian utopia…

Europe Is Flirting with a Disaster for Free Speech

December 9, 2017

Europe Is Flirting with a Disaster for Free Speech

The controversial Article 13 is getting some push-back from some officials, but it isn’t dead yet.

Freedom of speech is undoubtedly one of the most important features of any democratic society. Without it, knowledge could not be shared, injustices could not be called out, and the marketplace of ideas would be reduced to a single, miserable stall. Yet the state seems to need constant reminding of the importance of free expression; to them, it always seems to take second place.

The European Union, for example, sort of dodged a bullet recently as the European Parliament’s (EP) Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) voted against the controversial Article 13 of a directive on copyright infringement on November 20th.

If passed, this article would require internet companies to take measures to ensure that copyright agreements are observed and protected. In other words, the article would force companies and providers to filter out anything which could potentially breach copyright.

The LIBE vote against this article, however, in no way means we’re out of the woods yet; this vote was simply the last in a series of advisory votes before the Legal Affairs (JURI) committee takes the final vote on the directive this coming January.

Where’s the Problem?

You may wonder where the threat to free speech comes from in this directive. How do measures to protect against copyright infringement affect the rights of Europeans to express themselves?

The issue is that there is currently no effective, foolproof way to completely separatecopyright-infringing material from perfectly above-board speech. Oftentimes, online measures against “unacceptable” material such as copyright infringement, hate speech, disinformation, etc. winds up overzealously censoring legitimate speech.

A computer algorithm would have to be sophisticated enough to do the job of a judge.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Free Speech in the US Doomed?

November 9, 2017

Is Free Speech in the US Doomed?

To understand why an idea should be rejected first requires that the idea be understood.

Crowds of students gathered at the University of California-Berkeley in September armed with protest signs and chanting, “Speech is violence! We will not be silent!” Who were these students so passionately protesting against? Surely it would have to be someone as vile as neo-Nazi Richard Spencer or at least as controversial as alt-right darling Milo Yiannopoulos.

Who decides what speech constitutes violence?

In reality, it was conservative commentator Ben Shapiro – a far cry from a literal neo-Nazi – who inspired protesters to gather on campus with a rallying cry that equates speech with violence. That sentiment is a dangerous one and it is quickly gaining popularity.

When You Call Speech Violence

The problem with conflating “hate” speech with violence is manifold. For one, hate speech is subjective. Who decides what speech constitutes violence? If the answer is the government, then civil liberties will be in immediate danger, as it stands to reason that the government will crackdown on any speech is deems violent or dangerous. Consider how the government responded to the civil rights movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

“If utterances of speech are truly violence, then government can ban them as criminal conduct, just as we prohibit other forms of private violence,” Josh Craddock, the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy argued in an August op-ed for the National Review.

Another problem with equating words with violence is that it inspires physical violence to counteract it. Force is often justified when the threat of physical harm is imminent, so it stands to reason that force can be used to prevent hateful speech in a world where violence and speech are one and the same.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Free Speech Leads to Tolerance and Prosperity

October 26, 2017

Free Speech Leads to Tolerance and Prosperity

The protection of free speech, including and especially offensive speech, is vitally important to a country’s well-being.

J.S. Mill was an early advocate for our current view of free speech. He wrote, “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Such a rule is likely rhetorically supported in many liberal democracies, and beyond as Greg Lukianoff from FIRE notes, however there exist variations to the rule. European countries permit more restriction on speech and have adopted, by convention or individually, some form of prohibition on hate speech, no longer allowing it, unlike the American system. Hate speech as a category has always been difficult to define and is hued in ambiguity, but generally, it limits speech aimed at people based on race, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, sex, and sexual orientation. The United States has advocates intent on including this as a form of unprotected speech, a category which has been previously unrecognized.

Additionally, information from Pew shows a stronger culture of free speech in the United States when compared to other regions, reflecting the few narrow exceptions to free speech legally permitted now.

Not only is the United States an exception in terms of legal protections for free speech, a product of the First Amendment, but it embraces concepts of free speech to a greater degree than most of the rest of the world. This indicates a culture of free speech which is partially rooted in the legal protections but not solely.

To further illustrate the point that the U.S. is quite exceptional in regards to free speech, consider this survey which found the U.S. at the top of 38 nations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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