Category: Social media

Ofcom and Social Media: the Beginning of the End of Free Speech

Effort to shut down political opposition masquerading as noble effort to protect the children. 

Boris Johnson, like Trump, is a phony populist. His political stepping stone to the position of PM was Brexit. He is a British blue blood raised au pair in the bucolic English countryside. Johnson identifies as a “conservative” but holds mandatory liberal social beliefs, including the sacred touchstone, LGBT “rights” (above and beyond the natural rights every human on the planet is born with). 

The political class in the United “Kingdom” is serious about fully eliminating natural rights. The British state plans to squash the right of the British people to speak their minds, an effort headed up by a woman who has not held a real job her entire life. 

“Dame” Melanie Dawes is a career “civil servant” so valuable to the state she was awarded the “Honorable” Order of the Bath, a prize lorded over by the “Sovereign,” Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. She was recently appointed boss at the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom and will preside over the organization’s “Online Harms” legislation designed to strip not only Brits of the right to disagree with the state but billions of people abroad as the law will punish social media giants for allowing the politically and socially incorrect to post online. 

The control freaks in Parliament are slavering in anticipation over the effort to make sure Brits—or anyone else on social media—tow the line. 

Mark Zuckerberg and the other social media billionaires realize allowing free speech on their platforms will result in the state stealing their money—or even throwing them in prison—and they will shut down any and all accounts not following Ofcom’s new “rules.”

Naturally, this effort to shut down political opposition is masquerading as a noble effort to protect the children. 

The BBC, a long-standing propaganda conduit established by “Royal Charter,” reported on Wednesday:

Ofcom will have the power to make tech firms responsible for protecting people from harmful content such as violence, terrorism, cyber-bullying and child abuse—and platforms will need to ensure that content is removed quickly.

Once upon a time, it was the responsibility of parents to shield and protect their children from harmful content, now that responsibility has been taken up by the state and a legion of bureaucrats, “dames,” “sirs,” “baronesses,” “lords,” and associated “honorable” control freaks and sociopaths in the upper echelon of the British government. The connected effort to silence the plebs and commoners is marching under a banner calling for protecting the children (state sociopaths love this meme—only criminals oppose protecting the children). 

Julian Knight, chair elect of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee which scrutinises social media companies, called for “a muscular approach” to regulation.

“That means more than a hefty fine—it means having the clout to disrupt the activities of businesses that fail to comply, and ultimately, the threat of a prison sentence for breaking the law,” he said.

In a statement, Facebook said it had “long called” for new regulation, and said it was “looking forward to carrying on the discussion” with the government and wider industry.

Ah, yes, the “muscular approach,” the same approach used to punish Julian Assange for the crime of exposing the murderous character of the USG. He is being tortured and systematically reprogrammed in the UK’s Belmarsh prison. 

Other states are in the process of sanitizing the internet, making sure fact-checking the stream of lies and misinformation put out by various ministries of truth will no longer be tolerated. 

Germany introduced the NetzDG Law in 2018, which states that social media platforms with more than two million registered German users have to review and remove illegal content within 24 hours of being posted or face fines of up to €50m (£42m).

Australia passed the Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material Act in April 2019, introducing criminal penalties for social media companies, possible jail sentences for tech executives for up to three years and financial penalties worth up to 10% of a company’s global turnover.

China blocks many western tech giants including Twitter, Google and Facebook, and the state monitors Chinese social apps for politically sensitive content.

Indeed, China—the largest and most successful authoritarian state in the world—is the model for not only the end of open and free internet but for the establishment of a police and surveillance state as well. David Rockefeller loved Mao’s approach to controlling the people.

There is no more serious risk to “young people’s health” than the state itself—its wars, its rigged financial and political structures, and myriad other serious social and environmental issues created and exacerbated by self-serving sociopaths who claim to be “civil servants” rather than self-seeking water carriers for a parasitical and violent state. 

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Delisted by Google

Think Orwell’s Memory Hole.

Eugene Vollokh writes on his blog the behemoth Google has delisted articles critical of a legal judgment punishing author Jim Fetzer for daring to write a book questioning the official narrative on Sandy Hook. 

Fetzer, a retired university professor, was ordered by the court to pay nearly a half-million dollars to Leonard Pozner, the father of a child allegedly killed at Sandy Hook. 

Google received a request under the plaintiff’s name “asking Google to deindex pages that contain copies of the libelous book, and Google has gone along with those requests. Google generally does remove from its indexes links to material that a court has found to be libelous, so Google searches for such material no longer find it,” Volokh writes. 

I can’t think of a more perfect contemporary example of Orwell’s truth incinerating Memory Hole, a mechanism for eradicating the off-narrative. 

But a week and a half ago, another request came in to Google, and this request also sought to deindex material that simply discussed the case and criticized the court decision, such as various copies of “The Legal Lynching of a Truth-Seeker: Jim Fetzer’s Stalinist-Style Show Trial” and “Sandy Hook and the Murder of the First Amendment.” The court’s judgment of course didn’t find these items (posted in response to the judgment) to be libelous, and it offers no basis for Google to deindex them.

I wrote and posted the latter article in October. In it, I argue the lawsuit judgment against Fetzer represents another attack on an already decimated First Amendment, which is now almost completely irrelevant and, in the case of writing about Sandy Hook, might as well not exist at all. 

“The Fetzer trial is a big win for the ruling elite,” I wrote. “For years now, it has worked tirelessly to characterize investigative journalism outside limits imposed by the government as criminal—and now, according to the FBI, as terrorism.”

Last week my Twitter account was put in the deep freeze for repeating what Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity said of the Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity. I used the same selectively-banned pejorative to criticize Hannity the lunkhead teleprompter reader after he justified the murder of a foreign leader in broad daylight.

Not even Mossad is brazen and outrageous as Donald Trump and his Reaper drones bristling with Hellfire missiles. Israel is notorious for its deception. Trump is a ham-fisted primitive with a mobile phone and a Twitter account. 

Now that war looms—as it has since Donald Trump the promise-breaker took office—we can expect more Orwellian behavior on the part of the government and its media. The state cherishes war, for only then can it truly trample liberty to the utmost. You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists. 

The severity of the crackdown will depend on the severity of any military conflict between Iran and the US and its coalition of willing neoliberal nation-states, the latter increasingly cold footed as Trump tweets like a Mafia don at a meeting between the families. 

It could be more Trump political Kabuki theater. Kim Jung-un found out just what a used car salesman Trump really is. 

Or it could be worse, not only for the average Iranian suffering under the unwarranted onslaught of US economic and now military warfare but also for the average American. Not simply through the probability of retaliatory terrorism in America responding to US government terrorism ongoing in the Middle East for decades, but also as economic victims as the global petroleum-driven economy collapses. 

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Happy New Year! I am Now On Twitter’s Shit List

I used a “hurtful” noun.

I have a grand total of 15 followers on Twitter. Few if any read my tweets, let alone this blog. But your influence or lack thereof on social media does not count when the Silicon Valley boys decide to blacklist you. 

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That’s right. I called Sean Hannity the Fox News teleprompter reader a retard. This word, when used as a noun, certainly applies to Mr. Hannity. The official definition includes the following: “a person who is stupid, obtuse, or ineffective in some way.”

Sean thinks it is constitutional for the president to declare war by killing a high-level Iranian official. He either does not know or has ignored—along with his neocon fellow travelers—that Congress is responsible for declaring war. The brutal hit on Gen. Qasem Soleimani by Trump and his perfidious neocons is most certainly an act of war. 

The overrated and overpaid teleprompter reader Sean Hannity is indeed stupid and obtuse, but to say as much will get you thrown off Twitter. 

Meanwhile, it’s OK for Howard Dean to call Trump and Pompeo “dimwits,” basically the same as retard. Howard’s part of the establishment, of course, and Twitter loves these sort of state-loving sociopaths, that’s why they get blue checkmarks for using basically the same language I did. The word “dimwit” is also a pejorative. 

But never mind. War is coming. More people will be excluded and denied a voice in opposition to the sort of murderous insanity promoted every day on radio and television by this “retard” unable to decipher the Constitution. 

FEC, Social Media Giants Powwow on Circumventing First Amendment

Russian collusion BS will cover for a witch hunt billed as a symposium. 

It’s hardly surprising The New York Times and The Washington Post didn’t bother to report on the rally at the British Home Office in support of Julian Assange.

A quick search of the news reveals AOL and Reuters reported on the rally which featured Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. If not for Waters’ celebrity, it’s possible no corporate media outlet would have covered the event. 

Julian Assange is no longer news. His torture at Belmarsh prison is not worthy of reportage. Far too many establishment “journalists” (professional government script readers) believe Julian Assange is getting what he deserves for the crime of exposing the serial murder of the state in foreign lands that have not and are not capable of harming Americans. Now that task is left to white nationalists and conspiracy theorists, according to the state and its media. 

“How do we put ourselves in the position of a Julian Assange in solitary confinement, or with that kid in Syria or Palestine or Rohingya, being blown to bits by these people in this building here?” said Waters. 

I admit surprise Reuters would include this quote. It is at the very core of the issue—the US and Britain are guilty of war crimes and Julian Assange is one of a handful of brave people revealing the truth about the wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan. 

It’s not so much the snuff video of US soldiers remotely and casually slaughtering journalists and others, including children, in Iraq. It’s more about the tranche of emails lifted from the DNC revealing how mendacious and viciously manipulative the organization is with people like Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and John Podesta calling the shots. 

Meanwhile, large segments of a loosely defined alternative media are under attack. 

“New concerns are being raised that online conservative media outlets could face federally imposed censorship going into the 2020 elections,” writes Paul Bedard. 

Years after Republicans on the Federal Election Commission claimed Democrats were targeting conservative speech on outlets like the Drudge Report, the liberal head of the FEC is teaming with an anti-Trump free speech advocacy group to host a symposium targeting online “disinformation.”

The September event is inspired by Russia’s online efforts during the 2016 election and is expected to include Republicans and Democrats as well as big internet firms such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Politico reported this week that FEC Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub is hosting the event and summoned the tech giants. Her invitation reads, “The goal of the symposium will be to identify effective policy approaches and practical tools that can minimize the disruption and confusion sown by fraudulent news and propaganda in the 2020 campaign,” according to the outlet.

Politico:

The FEC has been largely ineffective in recent years, with commissioners unable to agree on nearly anything. And it’s slated to become even more hamstrung with the departure of Commissioner Matthew Petersen, effective Saturday. That move will leave the FEC with only three of its six seats filled—and without the quorum needed to vote on substantial matters.

Forget the confusion and uncertainty at the FEC. For a government bureaucracy, this is normal behavior. After Democrats take back the government, they will fully empower the FEC to go after “conservatives” and anyone else who challenges the narrative or supports a presidential candidate not pre-approved by the ruling elite, now popularly known as the Deep State. The gossamer-thin excuse for this inquisition is Russia and its unproven and clownishly ludicrous supposed attempt to collude with Trump during the election. 

“Google, Facebook and Twitter have been invited by the head of the Federal Election Commission to explore ways to combat digital disinformation in the 2020 elections,” Bloomberg reports. 

The all-day symposium on Sept. 17 will examine new types of false information spread online that could be used to influence elections. In 2016, Russia used online platforms in a bid to support the candidacy of President Donald Trump, according U.S. intelligence agencies.

Ellen Weintraub, the head of the agency, is co-hosting the event, which will also include academics, congressional staffers and political organizations, according to an official at the agency. 

The Russian collusion BS—widely debunked yet accepted as gospel by many Democrats—will serve as a cover for this witch hunt billed as a symposium. 

The social networks have been widely criticized for allowing the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency to abuse their platforms during the 2016 election. Many of the Russian ads and posts, which were viewed by millions of people, disparaged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, boosted Donald Trump or stoked divisions in American society, such as those over the Black Lives Matter movement.

Notice how Politico continues this outrageous conspiracy theory. It is only possible because this idiotic theory has been pushed by the state and its media since 2016. It is drilled in the heads of millions of people too lazy or busy to read beyond headlines, let alone do independent research on political issues. 

Politico, however, is not considered a dangerous white nationalist conspiracy website, the kind the FBI is now scrutinizing. It continues to skewer facts and set the stage for denying an untold number of Americans their First Amendment right to free speech. 

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NYT Defames Syria Girl

If you’re not a particularly astute news consumer, you might think large social media corporations are primarily blocking access and denying ad revenue to “conservative” voices, that is to say members of the alt-right that has at its core a large contingent of Trump supporters.  Continue reading “NYT Defames Syria Girl”