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“Politicians of both parties want to use the power of government to silence their foes. Some in the university community seek to drive it from their campuses. And an entire generation of Americans is being taught that free speech should be curtailed as soon as it makes someone else feel uncomfortable.”—William Ruger, “Free Speech Is Central to Our Dignity as Humans”

The police state does not want citizens who know their rights.

Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise those rights.

This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises ranging from the government’s authoritarian COVID-19 tactics to its more recent militant response to campus protests.

Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

And now, when they should be empowered to take their rightful place in society as citizens who fully understand and exercise their right to speak truth to power, they are being censored, silenced and shut down.

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

Australian PM Pushes for Crackdown on “Misogynistic” Speech Amid Fears Free Speech Is Fading

May 5, 2024

Australian PM Pushes for Crackdown on “Misogynistic” Speech Amid Fears Free Speech Is Fading

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s latest push for stringent internet censorship will continue to spark debate over free speech.

Following his more recent online censorship demands, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is doubling down and has advocated for more stringent controls on what is labeled as “misogynistic” online content. This initiative comes as plans are set for a national cabinet session in 2024 focused on women’s safety, which will address online harassment, among other issues.

This move marks another significant focus by the government, ostensibly on enhancing women’s safety, but raising alarms about potential overreach in curtailing free speech, as its other speech-related policies have done.

“Young adults should not be coached in disrespect or misogyny by online influencers,” Prime Minister Albanese said.

“I understand parents want to protect their kids from harmful material online,” Albanese added. “Social platforms have important social responsibilities and we need them to step up. Taken together, these reforms will give Australian families some of the tools they need to navigate the complexity of the digital world.”

The Prime Minister added that the legislation would carry “serious criminal penalties.”

The proposed measures include better tracking and monitoring the speech of those considered high-risk or repeat offenders and a drive to significantly reduce the presence of misogynistic content on social media platforms.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has expressed concern about the widespread dissemination of such content, particularly its impact on young users of social media. “The reality is that digital platforms are influencing our culture and social lives. They have a responsibility to do more to meet community standards,” Rowland said.

However, critics argue that the measures could infringe on digital rights and free expression, especially given the opaque nature of the algorithms that determine content dissemination.

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

The Hidden Messages of the Power Elite’s Cultural Apparatus

May 5, 2024

The Hidden Messages of the Power Elite’s Cultural Apparatus

To be crucified is to suffer and die slowly and agonizingly. It was a common form of execution in the ancient world. It is generally associated with Rome’s killing of Jesus and carries profound symbolic spiritual meaning for Christians.

In its figurative sense, it refers to many types of suffering and death inflicted on the weak by the strong, such as the ongoing genocidal slaughter of Palestinians by the Israel government.

Twenty or so years ago when the wearing of crosses by all types of people was the cultural rage, a woman I know said she was thinking of getting one.

When I asked her why, since she was Jewish, she said it was because she thought they were beautiful. She seemed oblivious to the fact that to Christians they were gruesome but revelatory spiritual symbols, the equivalent of the electric chair or a noose, but linked to the Easter Resurrection and the non-violent triumph over death that is at the core of Christianity.

Her focus on beauty forcibly struck me that secular culture had triumphed in its establishment of an anti-creed creed wherein the pursuit of a sense of well-being and aesthetic tranquility had trumped traditional belief, while it used all faiths in its pursuit of a self-centered nihilism through a faux-spirituality linked to a precious aesthetic of beauty.

Philip Rieff noticed this in the mid-1960s when he wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic:

To raise the question of nihilism, as sociologists since Auguste Comte have done, demonstrates a major change in tone: the note of apprehension has gone out of the asking. We believe that we know something our predecessors did not: that we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as unremembering, honest, and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden….

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

Free Speech Platform Gab Rejects German Request for Data on User’s Posts Insulting Politician Ricarda Lang

May 2, 2024

Free Speech Platform Gab Rejects German Request for Data on User’s Posts Insulting Politician Ricarda Lang

Gab is standing up to citizens facing Germany’s oppressive speech policies.

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The German authorities have attempted to get Gab, a free speech software company, to release personal data identifying a user of its platform, for making comments about a politician’s weight that are considered offensive.

Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba revealed this in a blog post, reassuring the user community that the request will not be complied with – the response was “a firm rejection,” he wrote. He also provided details of this fairly, even by today’s standards of government speech control and repression, an extraordinary case.

Namely, the user targeted by Berlin made a comment in 2022 that described the Greens politician, Ricarda Lang, as “fat.”

In addition, the user is accused of making two posts that “sexualize” Lang, the sum total of all this, according to the German government (the request came from the German Federal Criminal Police Office), being an attack “on the honor of the politician,” as well as a show of disrespect.

Greens Politician Ricarda Lang.
And that, the notice received by Gab continued, violates the section of the German criminal code that deals with the offense of “insult” (and envisions imprisonment – up to five years according to Torba – or a fine).

From here, things start to spiral: the posts, the federal police said in the request, were in German, so they suspect the user is located in Germany.

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

Wars, Apologetics, and Political Arguments

May 2, 2024

Wars, Apologetics, and Political Arguments

When political arguments ask you to commit to extreme positions, perhaps they are religious rather than ethical arguments.

Possibly the two most pressing world events at the moment are the wars in Ukraine and Israel. In each case, the argumentation for each side in the Western world has followed a similar and now-familiar pattern: My side is good, the other side is bad, and your neutrality on the subject is evil. In fact, anything short of giving material support for my side is an act of sedition.

But this type of argument is more suited to matters of faith than to matters of opinion or rationality. They are asking you to make real political and material sacrifices for their cause similar to the way a Christian asks you to sacrifice parts of yourself to live in faith that God is your creator. I am not necessarily making the argument that progressivism or neoconservatism are actually religions in their own right. While I understand that sentiment, those ideologies are still missing important pieces of what makes a religion a religion. Rather, it demonstrates how those ideologies use the concept of faith to compel populations to choose one side or the other, and commit their resources, in conflicts having nothing to do with them.

War arguments

For Ukraine-Russia, the American establishment opinion has seemed to be that Ukraine came into existence in 2022, nothing happened, and then Russia invaded it as the first step toward inevitable world conquest. Although “Russia is definitely losing,” if we fail to send over a single one of these aid dollars, Ukraine will promptly fall and Russia will easily overrun the rest of Europe in a matter of weeks. With Israel-Gaza it is that Israel has acted as a loving parent to the Palestinians, though sometimes utilizing tough love for their own good…

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

There’s a Sniper on the Roof of the School Where I Studied Authoritarianism

April 30, 2024

There’s a Sniper on the Roof of the School Where I Studied Authoritarianism

On student protests and principled defiance.

There are snipers on the roof of the school where I got my MA.

There are police beating students at the school where I got my PhD.

At each school, I studied authoritarian regimes and how they brainwash people into believing that state brutality is not only expected, but deserved.

* * *

At Indiana University, I wrote my master’s thesis on how the government of Uzbekistan invented a terrorist group, “Akromiya,” in order to justify their killing of over seven hundred protesters in the city of Andijon in May 2005.

I wrote parts of my thesis in the Indiana Memorial Union: a student center where I would drink coffee and work. A student center where there are now snipers on the roof, their weapons aimed at students on the ground.

Indiana University calls the IMU “the lifeblood of IU Bloomington”. I wonder how much lifeblood will be spilled. Matt Pierce, an Indiana state representative, warns that IU could become the next Kent State.

IU students are protesting Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. Since October 2023, the Israeli military has killed over 34,000 Palestinian civilians, about half of whom were children. Some Palestinian children died in bombings. Others were shot in the head by Israeli snipers.

Doctors in Gaza have noted the wildly disproportionate death toll, saying Israel’s focus on children is unlike anything they have seen.

“This is not a normal war,” says Canadian doctor Fozia Alvi. “The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.”

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

Banking on Surveillance: Republicans Investigate Major Banks’ Warrantless Data Sharing with Federal Agencies

April 30, 2024

Banking on Surveillance: Republicans Investigate Major Banks’ Warrantless Data Sharing with Federal Agencies

Congressional inquiry into banks’ role in warrantless data surveillance following January 6 raises alarm over potential civil liberties violations and improper government collaboration.

Congressional Republicans are further investigating claims that at least 13 major US banks collaborated with federal agencies to monitor private transactions for signs of “extremism” following the January 6 Capitol events. The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Republican Jim Jordan from Ohio, is delving further into the alleged cooperation between these financial institutions and federal agencies without proper warrants.

These banks, including Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, and more, are among those scrutinized for their roles in the reported surveillance. We previously reported about how Bank of America was found to be handing over data of everyone in the area during the events of January 6, whether they were suspect or not – and whether they had a warrant or not. But now, investigations suggest that the transfer of data was more systematic, potentially involving multiple financial institutions and the Biden administration itself.

Read an example of the letter sent to a bank here.

Already-uncovered information suggests that the Biden administration worked with banks to identify potential “extremism” by monitoring certain purchases such as religious texts like the Bible, or by flagging searches that included terms like “MAGA” and “TRUMP.”

According to the House Judiciary Committee, the probe has now expanded to include additional financial firms: Charles Schwab, HSBC, MUFG, PayPal, Santander, Standard Chartered, and Western Union. Letters sent to these institutions by the committee request documentation and communications with FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) and the FBI to further investigate potential warrantless surveillance.

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

The Vast Pharmaceutical Conspiracy to Silence Online Dissent

April 28, 2024

The Vast Pharmaceutical Conspiracy to Silence Online Dissent

Millions of dollars were spent to weaponize the public against all of us

Story at a Glance:
•There has been a coordinated campaign to attack and defame anyone who has spoken out against the COVID-19 response. This has primarily been restricted to social media (e.g., getting people deplatformed) but it has also been weaponized in real life (e.g., getting medical licenses revoked).

•This coordinated campaign was the result of a “non-profit” known as The Public Good Project (PGP), which was actually directly linked to the pharmaceutical industry. The PGP used the industry funding it received to defend industry interests.

•Vaccine safety advocates were able to get into the group where these campaigns were coordinated. There, they discovered numerous public figures working hand in hand with healthcare workers to descend like a hive of bees on anyone “promoting misinformation.” Likewise, we learned that the most belligerent doctors we keep encountering on Twitter belonged to these groups.

•Some of the influencers advancing PGP’s message through “Shots Heard” (and its sister United Nations initiative “Team Halo”) were hucksters who faked their own credentials. My overall impression from looking at everything was that this group operated in a very similar manner to many of the sleazy internet marketing operations I’ve seen in the past. Fortunately, the public appears to be seeing through what they did.

Almost any viewpoint can be “proven” using the “correct” evidence and logic. Purely as a challenge, I’ve successfully done this in the past with beliefs I consider to be abhorrent and completely disagree with…

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

Ireland’s Hate Speech Bill Faces Backlash Amidst Authoritarian Fears

April 26, 2024

Ireland’s Hate Speech Bill Faces Backlash Amidst Authoritarian Fears

Ireland’s proposed hate speech legislation sparks fears of an authoritarian police state, with critics voicing concerns about blurred definitions and constitutional rights.

Ireland’s proposed hate speech legislation has sparked strong opposition amongst many of its citizens, with individuals complaining to their representatives about the potential risk of the country descending into an authoritarian police state, according to documents obtained by BreakingNews.ie through a Freedom of Information request.

Critics of the proposed bill, dubbed the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022, have expressed ambiguity around the definitions of hate and gender within the legislation.

The Taoiseach, Simon Harris, is resolute in modifying the Bill, which primarily seeks to revamp the 1989 incitement to hatred legislation, and pass it through successfully before the ensuing general elections.

Critics contend that the Bill’s primary aim to count “hate” as an aggravating element in certain offenses is fraught with a lack of clarity.

An alarming constituent email, forwarded to the Department of Justice by Fine Gael’s Michael Ring, a vocal opponent of the proposed law, emphasized that the Bill infringes on personal constitutional freedoms. The specific email highlighted the significant powers conferred on the police due to Section 15 of the Bill, arguing that such state control was reminiscent of a police state.

Moreover, Ring relayed a multitude of similar constituent concerns to the justice minister, seeking an urgent response from him. Meanwhile, Senator Michael McDowell raised the question of whether transgender is a gender in Irish law and requested clarity on the term’s legislative definition.

Numerous emails exposed further condemnation of the proposed laws and raised concerns about the potential implications they could have on freedom of speech.

State Violence Is The Norm

April 17, 2024

State Violence Is The Norm

Rewilding is the solution

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about centralisation as a violent force. In short: state violence. It’s hard not to think about at the moment, given Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, backed by America’s imperialist agenda who, along with their British allies, have been dropping bombs on Yemen because the Houthis dared destabilise shipping in the red sea as protest against genocide. It’s hard not to think about state violence when one state is taken to international court by another who knows first hand the bloody scars of apartheid only for that genocidal state to decry the court as discriminating against them—only to launch a series of attacks on neighbouring countries. It’s hard not to think about state violence when one of those countries responds in violence.

It’s hard not to think about state violence when environmental defenders are being killed, locked up and branded ‘terrorists’ in an obvious move to mobilise intensifying criminalisation of civil protest. It’s hard not to think about state violence when children are going hungry in wealthy nations, energy companies are raking in mind-boggling, record-breaking profits at the expense of a stable society, and police are murdering women.

These are particularly awful examples, but state violence is the norm. In his phenomenal essay on legal interpretation, Violence and the Word, Robert Cover astutely pointed out the law’s fundamental violence as “commitments that place bodies on the line.” The state only upholds its alleged order with a willingness to commit violence against its civilians—to lock them up. Of course, all this is done in the name of protecting citizens, supposedly (although a cursory exploration of past legal cases shows the courts’ main priority has long been the protection of private property)…

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

The Palestine Congress

April 15, 2024

The Palestine Congress

Thank God for the German Hate Police! Or heil … or whatever the appropriate salutation is for these unsung heroes. They just saved us all from “hate” again!

Yes, that’s right, once again, democracy-loving people here in New Normal Berlin and all across the New Normal world were right on the brink of being exposed to “hate,” and would have been exposed to “hate,” had the Hate Police not sprang into action.

You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.

OK, what happened was, some pro-Palestinian activists organized a “Palestine Congress,” and attempted to discuss the situation in Gaza, and call for solidarity with the Palestinians, and so on, right here in the middle of Berlin, the epicenter of European democracy, as if they thought they had a right to do that. The German authorities were clearly intent on disabusing them of that notion.

Early Friday morning, hundreds of black-clad Hate Police descended on the congress location. Reinforcements were called in from throughout the nation. Metal barricades were erected on the sidewalks. Hate Police stood guard at the entrance. The German media warned the public that a potential “Hate-Speech” attack was now imminent. Berliners were advised to shelter in place, switch off their phones and any other audio-receptive communication devices, and wad up little pieces of toilet paper and ram them deep into their ear canals to prevent any possible exposure to the “hate.”

Sure enough, minutes into the congress, the anticipated “Hate-Speech” attack was launched! A Palestinian activist — Salman Abu Sitta — who had written an article that allegedly “expressed understanding of Hamas,” and thus had already been placed on the official German “No-Speak” list, started speaking to the congress on Zoom or whatever. Or … it isn’t quite clear whether he actually started speaking…

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

The Time The US Banned Criticism of War

August 11, 2023

The Time The US Banned Criticism of War

https://youtu.be/Y6oSn1Pqc6E

Opposition to mining will prevent a green transition to renewables

August 6, 2023

Opposition to mining will prevent a green transition to renewables

Source: Bare (2012) Environmentalists win review of two more plants near Rosemont copper mine. Arizona Capitol times.

I could overwhelm you with world-wide trillions of tons of mining waste and how China has rendered 20% of its farmland too toxic to grow crops (BBC 2014), but let’s just zoom in on one mine in Arizona. In 2022, 13 years after the Rosemont Copper Mine near Tuscon, AZ was proposed in 2009, was finally shut down after strong opposition.

Yet clearly mines need to be built to make the transition to renewables ASAP. If world peak oil was in 2018 (EIA 2022) time’s a wastin’. Energy will get more expensive and scarcer as it declines. Mining will need increasing amounts of energy as ore quality continues to decline and remaining deposits further away and deeper, as well as the energy to crush ore, smelt metals out and fabricate them into parts. All of these steps require the high heat of fossil fuel energy, especially coal, for which there aren’t alternative electric or hydrogen processes and transportation. The first generation will have to be made with fossil fuels, not the electricity from yet to be built solar, wind, and nuclear power plants.

Michaux (2022a, 2022b) has made some rough calculations of the electricity, hydrogen, and metals to make them in an energy transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 with wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, and biowaste generation. It’s a work in progress, but the best estimate I’ve seen since he included not just the electric grid like most researchers (i.e. Jacobson 2011), but the electricity to replace the fossil energy used by transportation, manufacturing, and heating of buildings and homes.

Then he calculated the metals required to build these 586,000 average sized power stations in addition to the world’s 46,400 to generate the additional electricity and electrolysis of 200.1 million tonnes of hydrogen to power heavy duty transportation and manufacturing.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

They’re Not Worried About “Russian Influence”, They’re Worried About Dissent

February 9, 2023

They’re Not Worried About “Russian Influence”, They’re Worried About Dissent

Listen to a reading of this article:

Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of “Russian propaganda”.

I know I’m not a Russian propagandist. I’m not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia. My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind. I’m literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior.

Yet for years I’ve watched people pointing at me as an example of what “Russian propaganda” looks like. This has helped inform my understanding of all the panic about “Russian influence” that’s been circulating these last six years, and given me some insight into how seriously it should be taken.

That’s one reason why I wasn’t surprised by Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Twitter Files revelations about Hamilton 68, an information op run by DC swamp monsters and backed by imperialist think tanks which generated hundreds if not thousands of completely bogus mainstream news reports about online Russian influence over the years.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West

February 24, 2022

The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West

Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.

Police in Canada deployed to dislodge the final truckers and protesters from downtown Ottawa, aimed at bringing an end to three weeks of demonstrations over Covid-19 health rules. (Photo by Dave Chan / AFP) (Photo by DAVE CHAN/AFP via Getty Images)

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression…

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

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Source: Bare (2012) Environmentalists win review of two more plants near Rosemont copper mine. Arizona Capitol times.

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