Australia is in the forefront of taking on Big Tech in the
disinformation wars. A couple of years ago, social media behemoth
Facebook, apparently in a moment of lunacy, decided to bar “publishers
and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and
international news content,” as Liberty Nationreported.
After an exchange of barbs between the Australian government and
Facebook’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, cooler heads
prevailed, and hurt feelings were salved. BFFs again, right? Well,
maybe not. Recently the Australian government made it clear it was
passing laws allowing stiff fines against tech giants for failing to
remove content that is not true – or, more likely, stuff it doesn’t
like.
Did Hunter Get a Sweetheart Deal?
“Communications Minister Michelle Rowland will on Sunday (June
25) release draft legislation to give the Australian Communications and
Media Authority (ACMA) powers to hold digital platforms to account for
spreading harmful fake news,” Anthony Galloway wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald.
No one is claiming the ACMA is exacting retribution for Facebook’s
lapse in sanity over unfriending Australia; more likely, the government
of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a left-leaning politician, is
exercising his socialist bliss.
Australia Wants Big Penalties
From
what the ACMA proposes, penalties will not be just slaps on the wrists
with a promise not to sin again. “Under proposed draft laws, the
Australian Communications and Media Authority will have the power to
impose potentially multi-billion-dollar fines on tech companies who
repeatedly fail to stop and take down undesirable content,” Australia’s
television station 9News’ staff explained. For Australia, the penalizing
media posts it determines to be disinformation is in keeping with the
country’s general propensity toward exercising firm control over its
citizenry.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Aussie mandates were some
of the most draconian and lamebrained. “Dr. Kerry Chant, the Chief
Health Officer in New South Wales, Australia, told citizens to avoid
talking to each other, even if they are masked and vaccinated, because
talking could spread COVID-19,” the medical “expert” claimed at a July
19, 2021, news conference, according to American Military News.
What’s frightening is that these same government bureaucrats will be
the ones determining what is disinformation and misinformation, which is
not comforting.
Europe Going After Big Tech More Subtly
The
enthusiasm for applying government power against free speech and
thought in the guise of tamping down fake news seems to be all the rage
globally. In an open letter with
the salutation, “Dear CEOs of Big Tech,” the prime ministers of
Moldova, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland,
Lithuania, and Ukraine wrote:
“Foreign information
manipulation and interference, including disinformation is being
deployed to destabilize our countries, weaken our democracies, to derail
Moldova’s and Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and to weaken
our support to Ukraine amid Russia’s war of aggression. Social media has
become a potent channel for spreading false and manipulative
narratives. Paid ads and artificial amplification on Meta’s platforms,
including Facebook, are often used to call for violent social unrest,
bring violence to the streets and destabilize governments.”
(Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The problem the prime ministers face is that Ukraine is engaged in the same information operations focused
on Russia. Nowadays news sources seem eager to push propaganda instead
of truth, so the lines are getting blurred. The prime ministers are
requesting Big Tech to rein itself in, but when will self-policing
result in hefty, punitive fines or worse? When a government gets into
the business of regulating speech, it’s a slippery slope from defending
citizens from being pummeled with news that will cause harm to
information a government bureaucrat finds uncomfortable or offensive.
The
best example is the US government’s collusion with social media
companies to regulate what is allowed to be seen by the public. “Both
Facebook and Twitter created online portals where government agents
submitted, and perhaps still submit, censorship directives for official
corporate action,” the Heritage Foundation concluded in the commentary When Government Colludes With Big Tech to Censor Americans.
“These relationships reflect a coordinated campaign to promote a
certain definition of truth and solidify the power of the Biden
administration, and Big Tech’s participation undermines its claim to
offer neutral platforms,” explained Will Thibeau and Erin Dwinnell.
It’s
tricky to manipulate the thoughts and commentary of people in societies
advertised as free and open. When attempting to police free expression,
the pervasive pitfall is that one person’s fake news is another’s
truth. Let the marketplace of ideas make that call.
You no longer control your home. Amazon does. “Hey kids, be careful. If Alexa hears you say the wrong thing, nothing in the house will work anymore.” They
say that a fool and his cloud are easily parted. We talk a lot about
deplatforming, but when a single corporation
doesn’t just control a site you use, but controls most of your life,
everything from your doorbell to your vacuum, your music and your
lightbulbs, and it decides that your politics are bad, you’ve got
problems. That’s exactly the situation that people put themselves in
when they
rely on Amazon or Google Home to control their smart home only to
realize that they no longer control their home. A touchy corporation
that celebrates Pride Month and BLM all year round does. Beware of offending it..................
As I read this I couldn't help but think of the infamous
Pavlik Morozov: Soviet Boy Hero, who denounced his father to the Soviet authorities, who eventually killed him. If you research this story you will find there's a lot of confusion as to what really went on, but, let's go with it because this we know for sure. He was used as a tool for Soviet propaganda as the example for all Soviet youth to rat out their friends and family. The only difference is now mechanical devices are listening on our conversations and reporting, to of all things, a corporation. One that's taken on the mantel of judge, jury and executioner.
I've tried to properly categorize his pieces by subject. Please enjoy Daniel Greenfield's "More From the Point" for this week.
A totalitarian state doesn’t have to be a place with a whole bunch of
new laws aimed at suppressing the political opposition. All that’s
really needed is the politically selective enforcement of existing laws.
ANTISEMITISM
Special Envoy for Antisemitism Explains Need to Get Into Bed With Antisemites -
“I know CAIR is problematic. It’s always awkward when you have to
explain how, as part of the price of fighting antisemitism, you have to ally with antisemites.
And the price of fighting antisemitism is limiting it to antisemites of
the right political persuasion............Actually, the main criticism
was giving the Nexus, a definition of
antisemitism coined by anti-Israel activists, side billing with the IHRA
definition. But certainly including CAIR was the toothpick on the ham
sandwich..........
BIDEN CONSEQUENCE
Did the $10M Bribes to the Bidens Really Come From Russia?-
“Obama was briefed on it. Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland were briefed as
well.” Russia and Ukraine, like sizable parts of the region, are an
extended
‘game of thrones’ of oligarchs and apparatchiks carving up the
resources of the ex-Soviet states, using bribes, corruption, and
force.The two countries are economically intertwined in complex and
messy ways. At RedState, Jennifer Van Laar makes the important point
that the recent revelations about Biden’s bribes were not just coming
through Burisma, a Ukrainian firm, but through an alleged Russian asset.............
Biden’s Suspicious Silence on Trump Indictment - He’s
laying low because he’s not the innocent bystander, he’s the criminal.
Let’s suppose for a moment that you are running for president and your
chief rival just got indicted. What should your response be?
A series of viral ads
A taunting press conference
Silence
Normally presidential candidates cash in on the missteps of their
opponents. Some of Trump’s GOP rivals may be nervous about going that
route, but there isn’t a single reason in the world for Biden not to.
He’s certainly not worried that Trump supporters won’t vote for him. And
yet there’s a suspicious silence..............
Biden’s DOJ Turned Trump’s Secret Service Detail Into Informants The bond of trust between presidents and Secret Service agents is being violated. The Obama strategy was to weaponize every
element of the federal government. The Biden administration, run by many
of the same people, are taking that strategy to the next level. Previously, I discussed how Jack Smith, the Clinton allied Special Counsel, had violated the attorney-client privilege of 3 Trump lawyers so far, bringing the total number of Trump attorney-client privilege violations to 5 so far. Even Trump’s Secret Service detail has been weaponized and transformed into informants................
DOJ Covers Up $5M Biden Bribe From Burisma While Indicting Trump
- “$5 million for one Biden, $5 million for the other Biden.” The
Biden Justice Department and its various arms were fighting to
keep a document alleging that Biden had accepted a $5 million bribe
hidden from the public. That’s the same DOJ that is ordinarily more than
happy to leak materials involving Trump and conservative targets to the
media. The DOJ and the FBI ignored a congressional subpoena and only
contempt charges provided limited access to the Biden bribe document.
The FBI claimed that it was following DOJ policy to protect
confidential sources. Except that the supposed concern for the
confidential source would suggest that Biden is not only guilty, but
that the money trail leads to some dangerous people. And yet little
follow-up work appears to have been done on the investigation. The apparent contents of the bribe document leaked once members of Congress were given access to it.........
CALIFORNIA IS AN ASYLUM BEING RUN BY THE INMATES
California Incentivizes ‘Transgendering’ Kids to Win Custody Disputes
- A steady flow of child cannon fodder for the woke culture war. Are
you in the middle of a bitter custody dispute? Just take your
kids to an activist therapist, declare them transgender, and then use
that as a weapon against your ex-husband or wife. This exciting new
development in destroying the lives of children comes to us from California.
Where else? A newly revised California bill would treat parents’
refusal to “affirm” their child’s gender identity as a violation of
health, safety, and welfare in the context of custody
disputes..............That’s just part of it. Baking this into custody
battles all but ensures a steady flow of
child cannon fodder for the woke culture war as parents prove how little
they care about the health, safety, and welfare of their children by
fast-tracking them to castration, mastectomies, higher risks of suicide
and all sorts of diseases to win a custody battle............
California’s Imaginary High-Speed Rail to be Powered by Solar - When your train is imaginary, it probably doesn’t matter what
fictional power source it runs on. Unicorns, happy thoughts, or solar
power. California’s high-speed rail, which started out costing $9
billion back in the 90s and is now set to cost $128 billion if it were
ever to be built, despite not actually being built, could just as easily
run on love or small children clapping. But solar is more popular now so they’re going with that...........
DEEP STATE CORRUPTION
The IRS Allows Eco-Terrorists to Crowdsource Harassment of Senators - Give them $1,000 and they’ll shut down an event while the IRS shuts its eyes...........‘Climate Defiance’ which is running a fundraiser to ‘Make Complicit Climate Cowards’ Lives F____g Miserable’. The ecoterrorist group which boasts of having
“fully shut down Joe Manchin’s keynote” and “made pipeline lover Amy
Klobuchar flee the stage at her own book launch party” is also pretty clear about what donors can buy by funding the environmentalist group...........
But Climate Defiance’s operations also share a funding platform with the DNC.............The Action Network, like Climate Defiance and Declare Emergency, is a
501(c)(4) and it shows the entanglement of the Democrat establishment
with the far Left even when its extremists are targeting Senate
Democrats and the White House for not adopting their full radical
agenda..............
.Its support for eco terrorism has never been subtle and the Freedom Center had previously exposed its funding of attacks
on paintings in Europe by Just Stop Oil. Like Climate Defiance and
Declare Emergency, Just Stop Oil engages in ‘direct action’ and made
headlines by splashing tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in
London’s National Gallery..........
The real Complicit Climate Cowards are in the IRS. Those complicit
climate cowards are the reason why art is under siege and events are
closed down. The IRS has ignored the law, allowed eco terrorists to
abuse the tax code, to destroy culture and intimidate elected officials...........The IRS............the same organization that sends
chills down the spines of ordinary taxpayers is terrified of using its
nearly limitless power to hold even the worst leftist nonprofit abusers
accountable...........
GREEN INSANITY
15-Year-Old Sues Montana Because State Has Too Many Trees - "Mica, aged 15, learned about climate change at the young age of four," Greta Thunberg has gotten old, literally (she’s 20) and politically
(she’s tiresome), time to bring on a fresh crop of victims to serve as
the fresh faces for the green litigation to destroy the economy and tax
us to death. Here’s the most sympathetic case that they’ve got in their lawsuit against Montana… for having trees. Mica, aged 15, learned about climate change at the young age of four, when his parents showed him the documentary Chasing Ice. This is what’s known as environmental child abuse. And political indoctrination of child soldiers..............
EDUCATION
Teachers to be Paid $150K in City Where Less Than Half of Students Are Good at Reading - New York City educators will get fat pay hikes and bonuses of up to 20%. Only money can fix education. Lots and lots of money. Dump trucks of
it dumped right in a giant hole in Randi Weingarten’s backyard where it
travels through the sewers into the coffers of top Democrats. When we pay our teachers like we pay NBA players, only then will
children get to the halfway mark at reading. Instead, we pay them like
WNBA players. For now, New York City schoolteachers must somehow survive on a miserly $150,000 a year..............
ISLAM
First Muslim Majority City in U.S. Bans Gay Pride Flags- “You can’t stop that.” Awkward, but running a rainbow coalition is
challenging. Black people initially dissented from the LGBTQ movement.
Lefties ignored the problem and waited for them to come around. They
figure Muslims are the same way and they can just outwait them. But that
won’t work. Islam is not just a set of cultural attitudes. And while
Islamists post-9/11 played the damsel in distress, the rainbow coalition
is now getting a dose of reality. After hours of debate and hearing from residents,
Hamtramck City Council has passed the resolution to ban LGBTQ+ Pride
flags unanimously. Hamtramck is the first majority-Muslim city in America. And the LGBTQ movement clashes with Islam..........Bad news for diversity.........How is a majority Muslim city diverse? It’s the opposite of diverse.............
Biden May Let Iran Collect Billions for Release of U.S. Hostages - “Iran
also expects the United States to unfreeze billions of dollars in
Iranian assets.” What’s worse than a formal deal with Iran? An informal
deal with the Islamic terror state. The enforcement elements on the
formal deal were mostly worthless and
put Iran on a track to nukes. You can only imagine how truly
spectacularly reliable they’ll be on the informal deal.................Islam does allow cease fires with infidels. But the cease fire only
lasts until the Islamic cause is in a position to annihilate the
infidels it reached a cease fire agreement with. The upshot of the deal is that Iran promises not to enrich uranium
beyond a certain point, will stop trying to kill Americans in Iraq, and
won’t aid Russia too much. In return, sanctions relief, as per usual. Also cash for hostages....................
UK Cops “Open-Minded” To All Explanations for Nottingham Rampage That Don’t Involve Islam - Mental illness. Obviously. Everyone is sad because a terrible thing happened in the UK. It’s one
of those terrible things that keeps happening ever since the UK decided
that its borders should be open… and there is no explanation for it................The attack is characteristic of Islamic terrorism in that it involved
a combination car attack and stabbing rampage. And that the killer’s
identity is being kept more closely than the crown jewels and Prince
Andrew’s romps with Jeffrey Epstein. The police however are keeping an open mind.............. JUSTICE
Unabomber, Linked to Biden Appointee’s Terror Group, Dies in Prison -Maybe Ted Kaczynski could have been in the Biden administrationTed Kaczynski, an eco-terrorist who waged a bombing campaign that
killed 3 people and injured many more, who studied at Harvard and taught
at Berkeley, is finally dead. The Unabomber may be gone but his legacy lives on. Ecoterrorists like
him have gone mainstream vandalizing art and terrorizing individuals. They’ve gone so mainstream that Earth First has a Biden appointee. And Earth First was the Unabomber’s north star.......
MILITARY
Woke Military Now Recruiting Non-English Speaking Migrants
- “The immigrants are not immediately put in jobs that require top
secret clearance.” After transforming the military from a force
defending the nation to a
woke culture war operation, recruiting dropped through the floor. But,
no worries, the Biden administration will fill out the ranks in the usual, “there’s always jobs at the Post Office” way by turning it into one giant useless welfare state.........
RACE
A Museum Pays the Price for ‘Blackwashing’ a Pharaoh - Americans cheer blackwashing history, other cultures don’t. Westerners line up to cheer the blackwashing of history, other peoples
are less enthusiastic. Netflix’s black nationalist depiction of
Cleopatra, a Greek ruler wrongly depicted as African, led to a major backlash in Egypt. But it was the decision by a Dutch museum with a prominent Egyptology collection to display this garbage that has come with serious consequences.......
TRUMP INDICTMENT, AND MORE
Getting Trump Once Again Required Killing Attorney-Client Privilege
- That is how prosecutors work in China and Russia. And now in
America. Attorney-client privilege went from a sacred trust furiously
defended
by lefty lawyers to just another “common misconception” when it came to
getting Trump. After targeting Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, it’s no
surprise what the Clinton non-independent special counsel’s strategy was...........
Trump Prosecution Violates Attorney-Client Confidentiality by Targeting 3 Trump LawyersFive lawyers have had attorney-client privilege violated to get Trump. As I wrote earlier this week…It wasn’t all that long ago that the liberal legal
establishment was attacking the FBI for listening in on chats between
terrorists and their lawyers. Defenders of Lynne Stewart, who was
passing messages to terrorists on behalf of the Blind Sheikh, claimed
that the government had violated attorney-client privilege and the Fifth
Amendment by catching her in the act. Stewart’s indictment was
described as the ‘death knell’ for the right
to counsel. Meanwhile, Democrats repeatedly violating attorney-client
privilege to go after a sitting and former president is no big deal.
This began with Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani. Clinton Special Counsel
Jack Smith is now escalating by going after 3 Trump lawyers.................I don’t believe that there’s a single case where five attorneys for the
same defendant had attorney-client privilege violated. This is likely
unprecedented in American history...........Not satisfied with setting fire to the first and second amendments, the
leftist coup against the republic has decided to also burn down the
fifth amendment..........
Why Trump’s Espionage Act Indictment is A Manufactured Process Crime
- The difference between the Clinton emails and Trump’s papers is in
the investigation. The FBI’s warrant for its Mar-a-Lago raid invoked
the Espionage Act
which meant that we were always going to end up here. The focus on
Clinton ally Jack Smith’s indictment has been the Espionage Act despite
its obvious inappropriateness when it comes to a former president. The
Wall Street Journal spells out the problem............
Trump is Charged Under a Law Meant to Suppress Political Opposition - Democrats have used the ‘Espionage Act’ to silence opponents for over 100 years. A year after the start of WWI, President Woodrow Wilson addressed his
message to Congress and warned that the “gravest threats against our
national peace and safety” did not come from “other governments”, but
from “within our own borders”. “Citizens of the United States,” Wilson continued, “born under other
flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full
freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of
disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.” Wilson, a notorious racist and a supporter of the KKK who had
contempt for a wide variety of other peoples, likely had German
immigrants, but not just them, in mind when he called for what would become the Espionage Act so that “we may be purged of their corrupt distempers.”................And whether it’s Wilson’s affair with a married woman, Hunter Biden’s
harem of Uber prostitutes, or Joe Biden’s money from China, the
Espionage Act is a red flag for presidential corruption..............
I’ve written nearly 6,100 columns for International Liberty, but only one of those columns has focused on Lebanon.
That was back in 2018, when I explained how the nation could have avoided a fiscal crisis with a spending cap. Now it’s time to once again write about Lebanon, though maybe today’s column is actually more about media bias. That’s because this story in the Washington Post, authored by Sarah Dadouch, shows how journalists have far too little understanding of economics.
Lebanon’s
worsening financial meltdown has been accompanied by a dire shortage of
imported fuel. Roads in cities like Beirut and Tripoli are now lined
with cars queuing for hours to get their allotted amount of gasoline, at
most a third of a tank.
…smugglers have discovered there’s good money to be made by buying
gasoline in Lebanon at the heavily subsidized price and then selling it
on the black market in Syria, which has a debilitating fuel crisis of
its own. …Many Lebanese politicians blame the gasoline crisis partly on
smuggling… In April, Lebanon’s caretaker energy minister said the
disparity in gasoline prices between Lebanon and Syria means smugglers
can make huge profits next door. …The Lebanese army, which has received
more than $2.5 billion in aid from the United States since 2006, has
made concerted efforts to curb the illicit commerce.
The smugglers aren’t the cause of Lebanon’s energy crisis. They’re
merely a symptom of the real problem, which is that the country’s
politicians buy votes from motorists by subsidizing gasoline. Get rid of those subsidies and smuggling will disappear overnight.
The
moral of the story is that bad things happen when politicians interfere
with prices. We have forty centuries of evidence showing price controls don’t work. When politicians try to curry favor by rigging prices, bad things happen.
And the second moral of the story is that journalists don’t
understand the first moral of the story (not that I’m surprised, given
the shaky track record of the Washington Post).
P.S. I’m flabbergasted that American taxpayers have sent $2.5 billion of foreign aid to Lebanon’s army, which gives the government fiscal leeway to pursue bad policies such as gasoline subsidies!
P.P.S. While gasoline subsidies are an insanely foolish policy for a
nation enduring a fiscal crisis, fiscal policy isn’t even Lebanon’s
biggest problem. As noted in this video, the country does even worse on trade policy, regulatory policy, and rule of law.
P.P.P.S. The post-war German economic miracle was triggered by the removal of price controls.
China’s
high tech surveillance state will be watching how much people eat,
according to provisions of a bill just introduced and sure to pass its
rubber stamp National People’s Congress legislative body. Writing at Breitbart,
Frances Martel is appropriately skeptical about the repeated official
denials that food shortages have anything to do with the state’ss
intusion into the most intimate details of life for its citizens.
China’s
communist rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress
(NPC), introduced a bill Tuesday that would mandate a government war
against “food waste” that includes ordering guests at weddings and other
public events to eat less.
The
bill also demands regulation of online videos showing people,
particularly young women, binge eating — an increasingly popular trend
on Chinese social media. (snip)
The state news agency Xinhua noted on
Tuesday that the NPC bill on food waste is 32 pages long and
extensively regulates how Chinese people consume food. Caterers of large
events would be mandated to use technology to monitor clients closely.
“Catering
service providers should adopt measures to minimize food waste, such as
improving management systems for food purchase, storage and processing,
and putting up posters to remind consumers to refrain from ordering
excessive food,” the bill text orders, according to Xinhua. “It calls on
catering service providers to use technologies such as big data to
analyze the needs of consumers to better manage food purchases,
transportation, and storage.”
The bill would also regulate the individual consumption of food.
“Individuals
should serve or eat an appropriate amount of food at weddings,
funerals, parties and other events, as well as in daily life, according
to the draft,” Xinhua detailed. “News media outlets are required to
promote public awareness of preventing food waste, the draft says,
banning them from producing, broadcasting or spreading programs or
audio-video clips on binge eating.”
Given
China’s use of surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, a
dystopia where the State coerces people into limiting their food intake
is not hard to predict, watching them eat every time they sit down
outside of the home (and maybe eventually inside it as well)............To Read More.....
Brushing aside privacy concerns by parents and civil rights activists, a Texas school district has gone live with a controversial program requiring all students to wear a locator radio chip that will enable officials to track their every move – or face expulsion. At the beginning of the school year students at John Jay High School and Anson Jones Middle School within the Northside Independent School District were told their old student ID badges were no longer valid. During registration they were required to obtain new badges containing a radio frequency identification tracker chip. To Read More…..
