Tag Archives: free speech

America Is Becoming The Last Outpost Of Free Speech

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On April 2nd, The Federalist posted an article about the death of free speech in Europe.

The article reports:

It’s been a banner week for authoritarians in Europe, and it’s only Wednesday.

On Monday, a French court banned Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Rally party and the frontrunner in the 2027 presidential election, from seeking public office for the next five years. The same day, The Telegraph reported that a toddler had been booted from a U.K. preschool for being insufficiently supportive of LGBT politics. Over the weekend, a British couple revealed they had been arrested based on complaints they expressed in a WhatsApp chat about their daughter’s public school.

This is exactly the kind of crackdown on free expression that Vice President J.D. Vance chastised complicit European leaders about in February, in an address at the Munich Security Conference. This week’s insanity further proves Vance’s dire warnings were right.

The article notes:

France isn’t the first country to bar political opposition candidates from its elections. In December, Romania’s highest court suspended its presidential election, blaming Russian interference. (Where have we heard that one before?) Calin Georgescu, who cast himself as a Trumpy “Romania first” candidate, took the lead in the country’s first round of voting before the court canceled the election and then barred Georgescu from running again.

In Brazil, former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro is going to be put on trial for supposedly staging a coup. The politicians who oppose populist candidates are taking notes on how President Trump has been treated and attempting to duplicate those efforts in their own countries.

The article concludes:

The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which took effect last year, ensures speech that authorities deem “hateful” can be punished across the continent. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted the law as “incompatible” with the “free speech tradition.”

Jailing citizens for the expression of ideas and barring political candidates from elections are two sides of the same authoritarian coin. Neither is compatible with self-government.

“[S]hutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process,” as Vance told European leaders in February, “is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”

He was right. Unfortunately, European leaders appear to have taken his statement as an instruction manual instead of an urgent warning.

This censorship would have come to America if Kamala Harris had been elected.

The Biggest Cases Coming Up For The Supreme Court

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On Sunday, The Daily Signal posted an article listing the biggest cases that will be decided by the Supreme Court in the upcoming session (which began Monday).

This is the list of the controversial cases:

  1. The case is called United States v. Skrmetti, and it involves a Tennessee law that bans giving children hormone treatments or genital surgeries to change a child’s body to match his or her chosen “gender identity.” That is, giving testosterone to and cutting off the breasts of girls who think they’re boys, and giving estrogen to and cutting off the penises of boys who think they’re girls.
  2. Americans have been handcrafting their own guns for hundreds of years. And for all those hundreds of years, nobody ever thought it was illegal. Even Democrats thought it was legal until just recently.What changed? Well, the Biden-Harris administration realized that it might be able to end this ancient tradition by deploying a slur. What were once handcrafted guns are now “ghost guns,” and with a name that spooky, they must be banned.
  3. The case is Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, but don’t get confused by the plaintiff’s name. This case doesn’t involve a noble fight against Big Tech censorship or a righteous stand against a screaming campus mob. No, this case is brought by pornographers hiding their smut behind the banner of free speech.Pornography rots brains, especially children’s brains, so Texas joined 19 other states and prudently passed a law saying that pornographic websites must verify that their users are over 18 years old. Texas, being a free state, wanted to strike the balance of allowing adults the freedom to make the self-destructive choice of watching pornography while protecting children who are too immature to fully appreciate the consequences of that choice.
  4. The Biden-Harris administration is obsessed with telling us that anyone who disagrees with it hates democracy. But at the same time, members of the administration are obsessed with doing end-runs around Congress and local elected governments to impose their will on the country.Their latest end-run is so egregious that even San Francisco is fighting back. The case is San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which a super-lefty presidential administration has gotten on the last nerve of a super-lefty city.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. The last case is particularly interesting. If you don’t tell someone what a limit is, you can make a lot of money when you accuse them of going over it!

Machines For Harris/Walz!

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On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Amazon Alexa’s political leanings. Who knew Alexa was political?

The article reports:

Amazon addressed what it called an “error” Tuesday after some of its Alexa devices promoted 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Video of a woman asking Alexa why she should vote for each candidate went viral Tuesday due to the device’s glowing review of Harris versus its neutrality on Trump. Amazon told Variety that its apparent pro-Harris bias was a mistake that the company quickly corrected.

This is the video:

The Daily Caller concludes:

Amazon is not the first major company to face backlash for alleged bias against Trump.

Google came under fire in late July for the alleged censorship of the assassination attempt against Trump from its “autocomplete” search results feature. “There was no manual action taken on these predictions. Our systems have protections against Autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, which were working as intended prior to this horrific event occurring,” a Google spokesperson told the Caller at the time.

The Biden-Harris administration influenced Amazon i n March 2021 to restrict books that expressed skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine, emails the House Judiciary Committee obtained show.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in late August that senior officials under Biden-Harris “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to suppress COVID-19 content that the platform otherwise would not have restricted. Zuckerberg said Biden-Harris officials expressed frustration when Facebook initially hesitated before complying.

Vote carefully. Recently Vice-President Harris described free speech as a ‘privilege.’ It is a privilege I would like to hold on to.

 

The Truth About Censorship

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On Monday, The Daily Wire posted an article about some recent statements by Mark Zuckerberg regarding censorship under the Biden-Harris administration.

The article reports:

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter on Monday that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured his company — which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and more —  to censor content that is protected free speech.

Zuckerberg made the admission in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) this week in which he said that his goal moving forward was to “be neutral and not play a role one way or another” for either any political party or ideology. He said he doesn’t even want the appearance of playing a role and will not be making political contributions.

“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” he said in the letter. “Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.”

The censorship during Covid probably resulted in people unnecessarily dying from the disease. We now know that there are some serious risks associated with the vaccine–that was kept quiet. We now that ivermectin used correctly can be an effective weapon against the disease–that information was suppressed. We now know that Hunter’s laptop was real–that information was censored. How much information about the current Democrat party candidates for President and Vice-President is being censored?

The article notes:

He (Zuckerberg) said that the company made a mistake by temporarily demoting a New York Post story during the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop after officials falsely suggested that it was part of a “Russian disinformation operation.”

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” he said. “We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again – for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S while waiting for fact-checkers.”

We are living with the results of an election that was probably stolen in more then one way. Let’s not let that happen again.

How The Internet Impacts Elections

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Search engines are a useful tool. However, search engines are biased. As someone who is constantly looking for information on the internet, I can tell you that it is very unusual for me to find an article without a liberal slant on the first three pages of a search engine result. And I am using and have used search engines that are supposed to be unbiased. During the election season, biased search engines are a problem. The voters need to access both sides of a story, and that can be very difficult.

On Wednesday, Newsbusters posted an article about some of their recent experiences with search engines.

The article reports:

MRC researchers searched Google using a “clean environment” (without the influence of prior search history and tracking cookies) and found that the search giant completely eliminated Donald Trump’s website from the top 100 search results, while pushing President Joe Biden’s campaign website up to the number one spot.

Researchers conducted three separate searches for the top three candidate’s names along with the words “presidential race 2024.” While the results for Trump brought up seemingly endless 2024 election updates, including news articles, polls and commentaries, the search engine did not display the candidate’s campaign website.

Google, however, had no issues displaying Joe Biden’s campaign website as the first result in an equivalent search. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s website appeared as the fourth result in a similar search.

MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider commented on Google’s tone-deaf bias in the aftermath of an assassination attempt on Trump. “Other left-wing media outlets and platforms are taking a pause from their anti-Trump tactics, but not Google,” he said. “The search giant has doubled down on its anti-American, election interference strategies.”

Schneider continued: “People who often do political searches on their computers will likely get different results since Google tracks their search history. But this study reflects a much darker, more sinister behavior at Google. It is through this kind of data manipulation that Google swayed millions of votes in the 2020 election. It must not be allowed to corrupt our democracy.”

The importance of where a search result appears on the first page of a Google search cannot be overstated. Not only is Google the go-to search engine for most people, holding a market share of nearly 92 percent worldwide, but the higher a search result appears, the more likely a user will click on a particular result, according to Brian Dean, a search engine optimization expert.

Never be hesitant to go to page two or three of whatever you need to find information that is not totally biased. It’s unfortunate that Google does this, but the American voters are smart enough to get around it.

The Cord That Holds Us Together Is Fraying

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On July 10th, The Federalist posted an article about the current disunity in America. The title of the article is, “America’s Conflicts Are Not Primarily Political Or Ideological, But Religious.” That is an interesting premise.

The author observes:

Because America, like all nations, is founded on religious claims, and relies on those claims for its coherence. We’ve long been accustomed to talking about America as a “propositional nation,” a phrase taken from Abraham Lincoln’s famous line in the Gettysburg Address that America was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The idea is that America is fundamentally different from the ethnic nation-states of Europe, which were based on blood and soil and religion. America supposedly transcended all that. It was based instead on an idea — a proposition. Anyone could become an American if he agreed to the proposition. 

And this is true. But nearly everyone who says America is a propositional nation is wrong about what the proposition is. America is not a collection of Enlightenment tropes at the intersection of Locke and Rousseau, a grab bag of philosophical sentiments about the rights of man. America is the creation of Christian civilization.

The proposition at the heart of America, undergirding our nation’s existence, is not just “all men are created,” but Christianity and all that comes with it. Without Christianity, you don’t get free speech, liberty, equality, freedom of conscience. All of it relies on the claims of the Christian faith, none of it stands on its own.

The article goes on to explain the problems with accepting the trappings of Christianity without accepting the basics of the faith–the deity and sacrifice of Jesus.

The article notes:

Some will acknowledge the Christian inheritance of America but insist that it’s a point of departure, that once the American experiment was launched, it could be safely separated from the religion that launched it. They think it’s possible to take the “best” parts of the Christian faith without the need to continually affirm Christ. “Christless Christianity,” you might call it.

But it doesn’t work like that. A few months ago the famous atheist Richard Dawkins wondered aloud in an interview why his own country, England, could not just go on having “cultural Christianity” without actual, believing Christians. He said he liked the cathedrals and the Christmas carols, and would like to enjoy them without the bother of actual Christianity. He wants fewer believing Christians and more cultural Christians.

It never occurred to Dawkins that you don’t get to keep the culture without the cult. The sad spectacle of modern England should suffice to prove the point. If there is no one to worship in the cathedrals, they will become concert halls or, in England’s case, mosques. If no one really believes what the Christmas carols proclaim, eventually people will stop singing them.

Please follow the link to read the entire article.

 

A New Level Of Election Interference

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The mainstream media is not a friend of Americans who love our Representative Republic. Currently the First Amendment is under attack in order to interfere with the November election. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has chosen to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported:

President Joe Biden and his administration have “made a mockery of the First Amendment,” according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, and the Supreme Court’s Wednesday decision in Murthy v. Missouri failed to put a stop to it.

Turley made an appearance on Wednesday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” where he broke down the ruling and the case for anchor Dana Perino.

“You call yourself a free speech absolutist,” Perino began, asking Turley, “What does this mean?”

“Well, it’s very frustrating for the free speech community because standing is often used to block meritorious claims,” Turley replied. “This is one of the most fundamental issues that we are facing.”

“I wrote about this issue, this case, in my recent book,” Turley continued. “You have one of the largest censorship systems in our history — if not the largest — it’s been called Orwellian by lower court judges. And what the court is saying is that ‘we won’t hear you on this issue because you’re not the right litigant.’”

The article concludes:

Two Republican state officials and five conservative social media users brought the challenge in Murthy v. Missouri, claiming that the White House’s pressure campaigns on social media companies to remove what the Biden administration deems “misinformation” amounted to censorship by proxy.

The Daily Wire is suing the Biden administration in a separate social media censorship case, alleging that the U.S. State Department is engaging with and promoting censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions. Last month, a federal judge rejected the State Department’s attempt to get the censorship lawsuit dismissed. The Daily Wire is joined by The Federalist and the state of Texas as plaintiffs in the case.

Are You A Terror Suspect Because You Attend Church?

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about documents  obtained by America First Legal (AFL).

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) brainstormed about infiltrating local communities to spy on Americans, and suggested being “religious” or “in the military” was an “indicator of extremists and terrorism,” excerpts of documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL) purportedly show.

These excerpts, released Thursday by AFL, purport to show how in 2023, the DHS’s newly created “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” looked for ways to expand their spying on American citizens, including by trying to “get into local communities in a non-threatening way” to get fellow Americans to tattle tale on their neighbors.

The committee, on which John Brennan and James Clapper — both notorious for their participation in the Russia-collusion hoax as well as for falsely claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation — sat, also suggested religious Americans, members of the military, and Trump supporters were possible security threats, according to segments of the documents released by AFL.

The article notes:

Not only did the FBI expand its “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists” (AGAAVE) classification to include the “furtherance of political and/or social agendas,” but it also created a new terrorism category, “AGAAVE-Other,” in October of 2022.

“[Y]es, in practical terms, it refers to MAGA, though the carefully constructed language is wholly nonpartisan,” an FBI officer told Newsweek.

The article concludes:

This is a top-down ideology, exemplified by Biden himself espousing the baseless yet inflammatory claim that “MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country.”

But the real threat is Democrats’ unabashed use of law enforcement agencies to target political dissidents. The FBI, for example, used a document from the left-wing extremist group, Southern Poverty Law Center, to target Catholics for beliefs like opposing abortion and holding orthodox views on sex. The FBI labeled these individuals as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” as reported by The Daily Signal.

As you read this, there are people in our government making plans to limit any free speech opposing their agenda and using government force to silence those who continue to speak. We need to vote very carefully in November. Any politician at any level who opposes free speech or talks about jailing people who disagree with him needs to lose his election by a wide enough margin so that he can’t cheat.

The Price Of Following The Crowd

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It’s a pretty safe bet that less than one percent of the students protesting in support of Palestine have any idea of the history of the Middle East. Most of them are simply doing the ‘cool’ thing with their classmates (not realizing that the people who are encouraging them are paid agitators).  So essentially, these students are followers–not leaders–who did not fully investigate the facts before they followed. This is not a trait employers generally look for when hiring people. Protesting is legal, destroying property and denying access to students are not. The students’ treatment of their fellow students who were Jewish was also despicable.

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following headline:

13 Federal Judges Say They Will No Longer Hire Law Clerks From Columbia University, Citing ‘Virulent Spread of Antisemitism’ and ‘Explosion of Student Disruptions’

The article reports:

Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the “explosion of student disruptions” and the “virulent spread of antisemitism” at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire “anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.”

“Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism,” the judges wrote. “It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.”

Actions have consequences. Tuition and housing at Columbia University costs approximately $85,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to pay for an education that, because of the actions of some students, disqualifies you from an entire group of jobs.

Moving In The Wrong Direction Rather Than Solving The Problem

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Antisemitism is currently a problem in America and around the world. It isn’t something that can be fixed by laws, although Congress is trying. Censorship of free speech is NOT the answer.

On Thursday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

The Democratic Party is engaged in civil war over the Israel-Gaza conflict, and Republicans can’t help but take a bullet for their supposed political enemies.

It comes in the form of H.R. 6090, a freshly-passed bill by the U.S. House of Representatives aimed at curbing antisemitism on university campuses. Antisemitism on American soil has indeed grown loudly since the Oct. 7 attack in Israel. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson has been unable to step aside and allow Democrats to expose themselves as radicals on the issue. Instead, he’s held multiple press conferences, including one where he was drowned out by protestors on the Columbia University campus, putting an unnecessary bullseye on the Republican party.

…Johnson’s apparent belief that tackling antisemitism is the key to uniting the GOP is doing the exact opposite. Sources in both chambers of Congress told the Daily Caller that members are frustrated with Johnson’s handling of H.R. 6090, known as the Antisemitism Awareness Act, and the target that’s now on their backs.

The dilemma, multiple GOP aides told the Caller: either back down on free speech, or be slandered as an “antisemite.”

“This botched antisemitism resolution is just the cherry on top of the crap sundae Mike Johnson has served Congressional Republicans for six months,” one senior GOP Senate aide told the Caller. “Whether through incompetence or malice, he is a worthy successor to Nancy Pelosi.”

The article notes:

“The Antisemitism Awareness Act will require, through the Department of Education, which has enforcement authority, institutions to crack down constitutionally protected speech. The Antisemitism Awareness Act, however well intended to provide institutions with more tools to address antisemitism on campuses, is overbroad and unconstitutional because it polices constitutionally protected speech,” lead counsel of government affairs for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Tyler Coward, told the Daily Caller.

Anti-Semitic speech is not a good thing–but it is protected by the First Amendment. In truth, we need to change people’s hearts. Limiting what people can say is not a step forward.

Disrespecting the Constitution

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

I think we would all agree that the Constitution has served as the basis of the success we have had in making America the longest lasting and most successful representative republic in history. The Founding Fathers got it right. Unfortunately, many members of the Marxist-leaning Democrat Party are doing their best to undermine the Constitution; led, of course, by the Biden regime. The Constitution, like any other guiding document, can only set forth examples of essential principles that must be followed. It cannot specify every possible way in which those basic principles can be violated. For a constitutional republic to survive, citizens must believe and agree to follow the basic principles. Here are some ways in which the leaders of the Democrat party are showing their contempt for the Constitution and its basic principles.

Let’s start with free speech. It is clear that the Founding Fathers considered the ability to express one’s thoughts without government control to be the essence of a free society. The efforts of the Biden regime to block free speech on social media platforms by influencing what they define as “misinformation,” violates the very principle of free speech. The CCTA radio show experienced this recently when the safety of vaccinations was discussed and the show was canceled on You Tube. Labelling free speech as “hate” speech and or “misinformation” is another attack on the principle of free speech.

Another example is the Biden regime’s continuing attacks on the right of citizens to bear arms as guaranteed in the second amendment. Defining semi- automatic rifles as “assault weapons,” as well as limiting the capacity of gun magazines and buying ammunition, are examples of their lack of belief and support for the principle behind the second amendment.

The Founding Fathers were extremely concerned about the power of big government to restrict the freedom of citizens, which is the reason they severely limited the role of the federal government and supported the role of the state governments. The Biden regime is showing distain for this essential principle of our Constitution. They have grown the federal government to an unprecedented 25% of our overall GDP; including 85,000 additional IRS agents to come after you the taxpayer. Recently, Biden has instructed all federal agencies to begin registering people to vote. This includes paying college students with federal funds to register fellow students, as well as nonstudents, in the local communities. This is clearly a violation of the constitutional principle that the federal government will not use its power to influence elections.

And lastly, the Biden regime is ignoring the Supreme Court decision that the President does not have the power under the Constitution to forgive students loans. This terminology is typical of the lies of the Biden regime in that this is not “forgiving loans” but actually making other people pay for these student loans. The separation of government powers into three branches is the most critical control mechanism in the Constitution. Biden is showing his complete disregard of the Supreme Court.

The irony of course is the Biden regime’s claim that Donald Trump represents a threat to our democracy; whereas, it is they who are the greatest threat to our constitutional republic since its founding. Add this to the list of things to consider when deciding who to vote for in November.

The Real Threat to Our Democracy

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

As usual, the Democrat left is lying to the American people. Truth is not something that they believe in. This has been the case with every communist/Marxist government in world history. The latest of many examples is the Biden regime’s claim that Donald Trump is the biggest threat to our democracy. As usual, they do not even recognize that we are a constitutional Republic–not a democracy. Let’s see where the real threat is coming from.

In a very revealing interview on CNN, Robert Kennedy, Jr., a third party candidate for the presidency (and an extreme leftist himself, especially on the environment), was asked who was the greatest threat to democracy, Donald Trump or Joe Biden. To the shock and chagrin of the CNN interviewer, Kennedy answered that it was Joe Biden. He went on to explain how his free speech was taken away by the Biden regime through social media banning which he has had to fight in court. He has also been denied Secret Service protection which under previous administrations, would have been routinely granted. Especially in his case where both his father (Robert) and his uncle (John) were both assassinated. Leaving him at risk would be one way of Biden eliminating an opponent.

Inviting illegal aliens into our country and granting them free support including airfares directly into our country are the biggest threat to our country at this time. Not only does the Biden regime invite them in, they make every effort to block Texas from sealing their border, including court actions. A country without borders cannot long exist. Free speech is an essential part of any free country. The first thing Hitler did when taking over the government of Germany was to forbid speech in opposition to his regime. He then constituted a federal police force (the SS) to arrest and incarcerate anyone who voiced opposition to his regime. Sound familiar? Look how the Biden regime is misusing the FBI and the Department of (In)Justice to go after Trump supporters, branding them as MAGA terrorists. Sending fully armed squads of FBI agents to arrest your political opponents and their supporters has never been seen in this country before the Biden regime took over. How about the coordinated campaign of bringing bogus charges and court cases against your political opponent, as Biden has done to Donald Trump? Also, the Democrat Marxists efforts to steal elections by the wholesale use of mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting. No free country can exist without free and fair elections and citizen’s confidence in the election process. The final example is Biden’s continuing effort to grant forgiveness of student loans, which he hopes will buy him votes, in spite of the fact that the courts have declared that he has no constitutional authority to do so. He just ignores the courts.

Well, you get the point. If Biden and the Marxist Democrats succeed in winning this coming election, our country is doomed to follow other communist regimes that have destroyed the freedoms and liberty of their people. We must not let this happen. If we do, we will have not only failed ourselves but our children and grandchildren. Get out and resist before it is too late!

Finally Addressing The Obvious

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On Thursday, PJ Media posted an article about the difference between the way the ‘summer of love’ Antifa protestors who burned down buildings and killed people were treated and how the January 6th protestors who did nothing but walk through the Capitol were treated. Evidently there are some people in our judicial system who want to restore equal justice under the law.

The article reports:

Finally a federal judge who believes in justice or something close to it. Could this be a crack in the dike of the tyranny of the DOJ? Is this the beginning of the end of Antifa pattern of violence and silence? We can hope.

To understand what’s at stake, let’s take you back.

At UC Berkeley in 2017, Antifa and their local black bloc franchisees set fires and rioted to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus. 

The anti-free speech violent protesters set off munitions, broke windows, beat people, and scared the university away from allowing any right-wing speakers to be heard on campus—unless they paid for their own security. Antifa radicals, calling themselves By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), framed themselves as brave and heroic for silencing speech of people they detested at the very birthplace of the campus free speech movement.

It was the first round of the speech wars between people on the right who were trying to speak and those on the left who called them “fascists” while calling themselves “anti fascist” and using violence to literally shut them up. 

Several people were arrested for the melee, but guess who were the only ones prosecuted? 

In an opinion issued February 21, California Federal District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney stiff-armed the DOJs Terrorism and Export Crimes Section out of Los Angeles and nailed them for selective prosecution. The decision to dismiss the federal charges against two men who at some point became members of a group characterized as “white supremacist” was based on the fact that Antifa did as bad or worse that day and at other events where both groups were represented and Antifa wasn’t prosecuted.

This pattern continues as charges were dropped against those who participated in the ‘summer of love’ and Vice-President Kamala Harris asked people to contribute to the bail of the people who were arrested. We need to restore ‘equal justice under the law’ if our country is to survive.

Free Speech?

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On Sunday, Townhall reported that the firefighters who booed New York Attorney General Letitia James at a promotion ceremony recently will face consequences for their actions.

The article reports:

However, in the classes Democrat-led state of New York, those firefighters are facing consequences for their outbursts toward the woman who will do anything in her power to take former President Trump down. 

“Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,” the crowd of firefighters shouted at James, while many booed. 

“Oh, come on. We’re in a house of God. First, Uhm, simmer down,” James said, attempting to simmer the crowd down. “Thank you for getting it out of your system.”

In a statement, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said that the firefighters who disrupted James’s speech will be forced to take woke “re-education” classes. 

I don’t necessarily condone their behavior, but I think woke “re-education” classes are not the answer. I might want some basic classes on manners, but I am not sure that is the answer.

The article concludes:

The letter was sent out to each firefighter stating that they must report to headquarters, laying out the “next steps” in their punishment. 

A few of the “steps” each FDNY member has to follow are listed below: 

  • Have DC visit each firehouse that had a member promoted
  • Relay bullet point message
  • They should understand that BITS is gathering video and identifying members that brought discredit to the Department
  • We want the members to come forward. They will come to HQ to be educated on why their behavior is unacceptable

Does anyone wonder why police and firemen recruiting is down in New York?

Finding The Common Ground

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On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article about a common factor among some  of the people attempting to remove President Trump’s name from the presidential primary ballot.

The article reports:

Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows claims to be unbiased when she ruled that Trump is disqualified from running in the state’s 2024 presidential race. But Bellows, the Democrat whose Dec. 28 ruling booted Trump off the Republican primary ballot in the northeasternmost U.S. state, previously cashed in on Soros family money.

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, during her doomed U.S. Senate bid against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in 2014, Bellows received a $2,600 donation from Andrea Soros, the daughter of billionaire investor George Soros, who notoriously spends his wealth influencing local elections across America by bankrolling the campaigns of Democrat picks.

The article notes:

Maine was the second state to officially declare Trump ineligible. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court decided on Dec. 19 to enforce Trump’s disqualification. Leading the charge in the Colorado case to ensure Trump’s removal is the Orwellian-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Between FY 2017 and 2021, CREW was given more than $2.8 million in grants by the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which acts as one of Soros’s two chief grantmaking vehicles, for “general support” and “support[ing] political advocacy on ethics in government,” according to an Open Society Foundations database.

And another one…

Spurred by Colorado’s decision, California’s Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis followed suit, requesting in a Dec. 20 letter that the state’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber “explore every legal option” to remove Trump from the presidential primary ballot there.

Kounalakis, too, is a Soros recipient. According to campaign finance records, Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton Soros, another Open Society Foundations board member, handed over a total of $45,400 to bolster Kounalakis’ successful 2018 campaign and 2022 re-election. Now, Kounalakis is gunning for the California governorship in 2026. Last year, Soros gave Kounalakis an additional $36,400, the maximum amount allowed, just a few months after she launched her bid to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

And in conclusion…

Free Speech for the People is the 501(c)(3)organization that filed a flurry of lawsuits across multiple states to bar Trump from the ballot by claiming that he violated the 14th Amendment’s little-used “insurrection” clause (Section 3). Dubbed the nationwide “14Point3 Campaign” in reference to the constitutional provision, the left-of-center nonprofit advanced 14th Amendment challenges in Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and Illinois as well as organized the most recent Massachusetts complaint.

…In the past, Free Speech for the People was partly funded through grants awarded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which has received $1.5 million in funding from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a primary Soros grantmaker. Between 2013 and 2017, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave Free Speech for the People $275,000 in grants, according to archived 990-PF forms.

See a pattern yet?

 

Time To Exit The United Nations?  

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D    

The United Nations (UN) was formed in 1945 right after the end of World War II.  Like the League of Nations formed after World War I, it was hoped that the UN would foster global peace among nations.  It is time to assess whether the UN has achieved that objective and whether our participation in it is beneficial to our country.  There have been many wars since the creation of the UN such as the Korean War, Vietnam War, Israeli Six Day War, Iraq War and currently Russia/Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas conflict.  

One might argue that the presence of the UN has prevented a nuclear World War III, but that would be a stretch to say the least. The threat of mutual destruction has been the controlling factor in preventing nuclear war thus far.  Whether that will continue with the spread of nuclear weapons to China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and inevitably Iran remains to be seen. The existence of the UN does not seem to have prevented nuclear proliferation.   

Is membership in the UN beneficial for the United States? The UN started with 51 countries and now has 189. The majority of these countries are not democratic and their values and principles are not consistent with our constitution.  Worse still, the structure of the UN General Assembly gives every country one vote with the weight of the smallest country (Tuvala, population 12,000) carrying the same impact of the United States.  Currently, the United States pays up to 25% of the UN annual budget of about $4 billion which amounts to $1 billion a year.  Money that could be spent on securing our borders, for example.  

Some other areas of concern are the leftist leaning decisions of the UN.  The World Health Organization arm of the UN mishandled the COVID 19 pandemic and failed to hold China in anyway responsible for the creation and spreading of the manmade virus. The UN’s unwavering support of the climate change extremist’s agenda, such as the Paris Accords, and the war against fossil fuels threatens our country and way of life, while allowing China and India to continue to build coal burning power plants.   Another example, is the UN’s failure to condemn the barbaric atrocities of Hamas for almost two months and their history of condemning Israel at the slightest excuse. They have never condemned Iran, the biggest sponsor of terror in the world.  The latest example is UNESCO’s (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) global wide guidelines that would severely restrict free speech in the media and social platforms. The guidelines require the blocking of any speech that they label as “misinformation.”  Sound familiar?  They also boldly stated that the U.S. Constitution needs to be changed to reflect these new guidelines. 

  It is time to have a serious debate as to whether we want to turn over the governance of our country to some global authority.  Some of the leftists in this country believe we should.  I do not and hope neither do you. With China increasingly controlling the UN by placing members of their communist party in key positions, we must make an honest evaluation of whether the UN has outlived its usefulness. 

Injustice in Our Justice System

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Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D   

There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are seeing glaring examples of this in our justice (maybe better our injustice system).    As any sensible person can see, President Trump is being singled out by the Democrat’s for persecution not prosecution. Their fear of him is palpable and they will do anything to stop him from running again. We must make sure they fail, or our constitutional republic will never recover. 

Some judges have become political pawns rather than fair arbiters of facts and truth.  The case in New York is a prime example. The judge issued a summary judgement  against President Trump before even hearing his defense. The judge is a lifelong Democrat as is the prosecutor Latisha James.  As in the other three cases against President Trump, this judge placed a “gag” order on President Trump that violates his first amendment right to free speech. The case in Atlanta about election interference also includes a gag order. There is no legal justification for preventing a defendant from commenting critically about the trial process or the motivation of the judge or prosecutor. The only legal justification for a gag order by a judge is based on 18USC1512 which is concerned with violence, threats and intimidation of witnesses. It says nothing about criticizing the judge, clerk or prosecutor. In today’s judicial system the outcome of a case often has more to do with the judge who tries the case than the facts presented. This is not blind justice. It is right out of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. 

Another troubling development, as shown by the fraudulent cases against the former president, is the prosecution or threat of prosecution of his attorneys and staff.  Prosecutors in the Atlanta case are using what is called RICO tactics that were designed to be used against organized crime. What they do is threaten the defendant’s attorney with felony prosecution if he or she does not reveal supposedly privileged conversation with their clients. The enormous cost of defending oneself is often sufficient to bankrupt the attorney. This actually amounts to blackmail. Who can trust the truthfulness of a person who is threatened with jail time, professional ruin and financial destruction if they do not go along with the prosecutors and turn states evidence against their client who came to them, expecting  attorney/client privacy? This is not the justice that our Founding Fathers expected would occur in our country. 

So what do we do about this trend?  First, as stated above we must support the re-election of President Trump to show the leftist Democrats that these tactics will not work in this country. Second, we must get our state legislators to pass legislation that makes the communication between attorney and client  absolutely privileged and cannot be used by any prosecutor in a trial or lawsuit. It should be similar to the spousal rule that a wife cannot be forced or coerced into testifying against her husband and vice versa. In fact, an attorney should not be allowed to testify willingly against a client based on privileged communications. Third, there should be an independent  process that can review the actions of a judge to ensure that political motivations are not influencing the judge’s actions and decisions.   

Without these or similar actions to protect the integrity of the justice system, the citizen’s confidence that we can receive justice before the law will continue to be undermined. 

When Our Government Works Against The Interests Of The Voters

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On November, The Washington Examiner posted an article about the partnership between an agency in the Department of Homeland Security and several university centers to identify online content worthy of censorship. Why is our government working with universities to censor free speech? Might that be part of the reason our colleges have become indoctrination centers?

The article reports:

An agency within the Department of Homeland Security partnered with several university centers to identify online content worthy of censorship, according to a new report from the House Judiciary Committee.

The report, a project of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, detailed how the federal government formed a partnership with the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, and other groups. Titled the “Election Integrity Partnership,” the consortium aimed to identify election-related content that needed to be censored.

The report said the partnership was established in July 2020 by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a small agency within the Department of Homeland Security. The partnership then worked with social media companies to throttle content that questioned the integrity of the election process.

“The federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions,” the report said. “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: True information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

The article also notes:

The report named several prominent politicians, people, and conservative news outlets that had been targeted for censorship, including former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Babylon Bee satire site, and Newsmax.

“Stanford and others, in collaboration with the federal government, established the EIP for the express purpose of violating Americans’ civil liberties: Because no federal agency ‘has a focus on, or authority regarding, election misinformation originating from domestic sources within the United States,’ there is ‘a critical gap for non-governmental entities to fill.’ CISA and Stanford created the EIP to bridge this ‘critical gap’ — an unconstitutional workaround for unconstitutional censorship,” the report said.

The report contained numerous screenshots of emails between government officials and employees of Twitter, Facebook, and the university “misinformation” centers, many of which included direct requests to censor content.

One of the things that was censored was any reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Government agencies knew the laptop was real and probably anticipated the information on it being reported before the election. The letter from the retired intelligence agents came out in October 2020, just before the election. Any valid information on the laptop was censored. At some point, American voters are going to realize that they have been manipulated and lied to by their own government. That will be interesting to watch.

A Victory For Freedom Of Speech

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Having been routinely shadow banned on Facebook (there is a Right Wing Granny group on Facebook, please join), I appreciate the fact that Texas is fighting the censorship that Big Tech has imposed on conservatives in recent years. It seems that there may be an end to that censorship. As I write this, a friend’s post has been thoroughly blacked out because Facebook didn’t think anyone should be allowed to see it.

On Tuesday, Fox News reported the following:

A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law on Friday that seeks to curb censorship by social media platforms. The ruling, a major victory for Republicans who charge companies like Twitter and Facebook are limiting free speech, is a step in a major legal battle that could end up at the Supreme Court.

The lawsuit is challenging HB 20, a Texas bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that regulates social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users, which includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, and says they cannot censor or limit users’ speech based on viewpoint expression. 

In his opinion, Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit said the platforms argued for “a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Oldham continued.

The article notes:

Friday’s ruling created what is known as a “circuit split,” since the eleventh circuit struck down a similar social media law in Florida. A circuit split generally increases the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking up a case.

It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court will take the case and what their ruling will be. It is also interesting to see if this case settled  before the mid-term election.

This Might Be A Very Interesting Case

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times reported that Terry Doughty, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, has ruled that Missouri and Louisiana officials can obtain documents to investigate the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with social media giants in an effort to censor and suppress free speech.

The article reports:

The ruling comes after the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri filed a lawsuit in May alleging that the Biden administration “colluded with and/or coerced social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social media platforms by labeling the content ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’”

The attorneys general named social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube in a press release announcing the lawsuit in May.

They also claimed that President Joe Biden himself, along with other top-ranking government officials, had worked with the platforms to censor and suppress free speech, including “truthful information” pertaining to the origins of COVID-19, the effectiveness of masks, election integrity, and the security of voting by mail, as well as the ongoing Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are Biden, former press secretary Jen Psaki, chief medical adviser to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Disinformation Governance Board executive director Nina Jankowicz, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and others.

As someone whose Right Wing Granny group is almost always ‘restricted’ on Facebook, I appreciate their efforts. I have been ‘shadow banned’ for years. It has become a way of life.

Do you honestly believe that if the truth about Hunter’s laptop, President Biden’s mental state, or the honest numbers on Covid-19 had been generally known by the public, the vote for President would have been even close? I don’t believe 2020 was an honest election, but that is another story. A Republic (which America is–not a Democracy) depends on a free, honest press to inform its citizens. We don’t have that right now. The only way you are going to find out what is actually happening is to go to the internet and find news sources you trust. You cannot currently find a lot of truth in any of the mainstream media.

Blocking Free Speech

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A politically neutral Twitter is a threat to Democrat success at the voting booth. If people had been allowed to know more about Hunter Biden’s laptop, it might have changed their votes. There are still some people who because of their primary news sources don’t know about the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop or the efforts to suppress the news about the laptop. That is not healthy for our Republic. There will be a fight to prevent Elon Musk from turning Twitter into a free speech platform because that is a threat to the Democrats’ monopoly on the American media.

Fox News reported Wednesday on a letter sent from Representative Jim Jordan to Federal Trade Commission chief Lina Khan regarding the sale of Twitter.

The article reports:

“The day after Twitter’s board of directors agreed to sell Twitter to Mr. Elon Musk, the Open Markets Institute (OMI), an extreme left-wing political advocacy organization, called on Biden regulators at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Justice Department to ‘block’ the purchase,” Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter sent to Khan on Wednesday and obtained by FOX Business. 

“We are concerned that OMI – where you were previously employed as Legal Director – may be trying to leverage its close relationship with you to take action to further limit free speech online,” Jordan told Khan.

Open Markets Institute Director Barry Lynn issued a statement on April 26 saying the group believes Musk’s purchase of Twitter “poses a number of immediate and direct threats to American democracy and free speech.”

Lynn went on to say that Open Markets “believes the deal violates existing law,” and that the FCC, DOJ and FTC “have ample authority to block it.”

Jordan wrote in his letter to Khan that “OMI appears to believe that the FTC will be receptive to its cavalier effort to influence a federal agency that is run by its former employee.”

The article concludes:

Khan has a lengthy history of urging the federal government to go after Big Tech firms and regulate their power. After she became head of the FTC, tech behemoths Facebook and Amazon both asked that she be removed from any involvement in the agency’s antitrust litigation against the companies, alleging that she has a clear bias against them that is well documented.

I am not convinced that the people saying that Elon Musk buying Twitter is a threat to free speech actually understand what free speech is.

About That Free Country We Are Supporting

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First of all, let me make it clear that what is happening in Ukraine is horrible. Civilians are being targeted, innocent people are being killed, prisoners are being tortured and killed. It’s a horrible situation. I should also mention that the first casualty of war is truth, so we have no way of knowing how much of what we are hearing is true.

On Monday, Hot Air reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put a program in place following Russia’s invasion of his country. His government is seeking to identify “traitors” who have expressed support for Russia and its war against “Nazis” in Ukraine.

The article reports:

Anyone who has been materially aiding the enemy is of course subject to prosecution, but people have been arrested just for expressing their support for Moscow on social media. That’s what happened to a man known only as “Victor” this month. Ukrainian security officers in full riot gear showed up at his apartment in Kharkiv to talk to him about some of his social media posts before hauling him off to jail. (Associated Press)

“Yes, I supported (the Russian invasion of Ukraine) a lot. I’m sorry. … I have already changed my mind,” said Viktor, his trembling voice showing clear signs of duress in the presence of the Ukrainian security officers.

“Get your things and get dressed,” an officer said before escorting him out of the apartment. The SBU did not reveal Viktor’s last name, citing their investigation.

Viktor was one of nearly 400 people in the Kharkiv region alone who have been detained under anti-collaboration laws enacted quickly by Ukraine’s parliament and signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.

If four hundred people have been locked up just in the Kharkiv region under these disinformation laws, how many have been detained across the entire country? It’s almost certainly in the thousands, and all in a matter of a couple of months. To his credit, Zelensky at least got the Parliament to write up a law and signed it, which is better than doing it via an executive order the way Joe Biden did, but it’s still an alarming development.

I understand that a lot of bad things can happen during the fog of war, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is no exception.

The article concludes:

We already know that a similar situation has existed in Russia from the beginning. Anyone who spoke out of turn about the invasion using unapproved language – including journalists – was quickly hauled from the public square and locked up. How is what Ukraine is doing any different? It’s not, at least as far as I can tell.

Of course, the United States has surrendered the high ground in terms of speaking up about this. We now have our own Ministry of Truth in the Department of Homeland Security where our own Orwellian Santa Clause will be making a list and checking it twice to see who is engaging in speech not approved by the Biden administration. How can we criticize Zelenski for doing the same thing that his biggest foreign supporter is doing?

This doesn’t sound like President Zelensky supports free speech.

The Deep State Tries To Put Guardrails On Twitter

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On Wednesday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about how the political left and the fourth branch of government are attempting to put guardrails on Twitter now that Twitter is threatening them with free speech.

The article reports:

I think we are now seeing the outlines of how the Fourth Branch of Government are planning to keep control over information, specifically public discussion on Big Tech platforms, even as Elon Musk moves to open the valves of information from the social media platform Twitter.

Previously the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced a new Dept of Homeland Security priority to combat disinformation {LINK} on technology platforms including social media.

Many eyebrows were raised as the announcement appeared to be an open admission that the U.S. government was going to control information by applying labels, that would align with allies in social media, who need a legal justification for censorship and content removal.

This CISA announcement was quickly followed by various government officials and agencies saying it was critical to combat Russian disinformation, as the events in Ukraine unfolded.  In essence, Ukraine was the justification for search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to begin targeting information and content that did not align with the official U.S. government narrative.

Previously those same methods were deployed by the U.S. government, specifically the CDC and FDA, toward COVID-19 and the vaccination program. All of this background aligns with the previous visibility of a public-private partnership between the bureaucracy of government, the U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. social media.  That partnership now forms the very cornerstone of the DHS/CISA effort to control what information exists in the public space.  It is highly important that people understand what is happening.

In July of 2021 the first admission of the official agenda behind the public-private partnership was made public {Reuters Article}.

What we are seeing now is an extension of the government control mechanisms, combined with a severe reaction by all stakeholders to the latest development in the Twitter takeover.

For two years the control mechanisms around information have been cemented by govt and Big Tech.  Even the deployment of the linguistics around disinformation, misinformation and malinformation is all part of that collective effort.  The collaboration between the government and Big Tech is not a matter for debate, it is all easily referenced by their own admissions.   The current issue is how they are deploying the information controls.

The Daily Wire reported on Tuesday:

The European Union issued a warning to Elon Musk on Tuesday, telling him that he must comply with EU regulations on policing online content, or face severe penalties.

In an interview with the Financial Times Tuesday, EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said that he was giving Musk a “reality check,” adding that Twitter must cooperate with the EU’s rules on content moderation, including the pending Digital Services Act. The prospective legislation would force large tech platforms to take more action to disclose and remove illegal content, including “hate speech,” as noted by The Guardian.

There are people in America and around the world that are afraid of free speech. We are going to have to be alert to make sure that those people are not successful in determining what Americans and people around the world are allowed to hear.

A New Future For Twitter

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On Monday, NewsMax reported that Twitter is planning on accepting Elon Musk’s final offer for $43 billion to buy the company.

The article reports:

Twitter may announce the $54.20-per-share deal later Monday, once its board has met to recommend the transaction to Twitter shareholders, the sources said, adding it was still possible the deal could collapse at the last minute.

Musk, the world’s richest person according to Forbes, is negotiating to buy Twitter in a personal capacity and Tesla is not involved in the deal.

The article concludes:

The deal, if it happens, would come just four days after Musk unveiled a financing package to back the acquisition.

This led Twitter’s board to take his offer more seriously and many shareholders to ask the company not to let the opportunity for a deal slip away, Reuters reported on Sunday. Before Musk revealed the financing package, Twitter’s board was expected to reject the bid, sources had said.

The sale would represent an admission by Twitter that Agrawal is not making enough traction in making the company more profitable, despite being on track to meet ambitious financial goals the company set for 2023. Twitter’s shares were trading higher than Musk’s offer price as recently as November.

Musk unveiled his intention to buy Twitter on April 14 and take it private via a financing package comprised of equity and debt. Wall Street’s biggest lenders, except those advising Twitter, have all committed to provide debt financing.

Musk’s negotiating tactics — making one offer and sticking with it — resembles how another billionaire, Warren Buffett, negotiates acquisitions. Musk did not provide any financing details when he first disclosed his offer for Twitter, making the market skeptical about its prospects.

This could be very interesting. It would be nice to bring free speech back to Twitter. I am on Truth Social as rwg@Right Wing Granny. Truth Social is unfiltered and I wouldn’t use it as a reliable source, but it is a place where people can express their ideas and opinions freely. It would be nice if Twitter also became a place where free speech is welcomed.

UPDATE: The purchase is complete. The reaction of the political left is totally entertaining!

 

 

Unfortunately The Technology Sector Is Not Politically Neutral

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The Daily Wire recently posted an editorial about the political role the technology industry is playing in America.

The editorial notes:

You have to hand it to GoFundMe. The donation platform just decisively proved that Big Tech doesn’t have a monopoly on radicalism. So does the next tier of Silicon Valley darling — call it “Medium Tech.”

GoFundMe made this fact clear when it suddenly seized $8 million that people had donated in support of the Canada trucker protest, known as the “Freedom Convoy.” Not only did the tech company refuse to give that money to the truckers, who were protesting heavy-handed pandemic mandates, but it then announced that it would give the money to other causes. Only after people angrily pointed out that they donated the money to the truckers did GoFundMe agree to refund them.

There’s only one possible explanation for these actions: An intolerant, extreme, and exclusionary worldview. GoFundMe is the same company that facilitated donations to groups like Antifa, which organizes riots, and the armed mob that captured an entire Seattle neighborhood and kicked out the police in 2020. It takes a special kind of radicalism to accept anarchy in the streets yet oppose civil disobedience by protesters who simply wanted to save their jobs and preserve their freedom.

And GoFundMe isn’t alone. Much of Medium Tech suffers from the same ideological extremism. While Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple draw the most attention for silencing people and imposing their views on society, scores of smaller tech companies do the same thing on a regular basis.

Last year GoDaddy refused to host a pro-life website.

The article also notes:

Then there’s MailChimp. After the 2020 election, the email service suspended the Northern Virginia Tea Party, which had the gall to hold a rally calling for election integrity. That, too, ran afoul of elite tech views, resulting in punitive measures.

The list of companies engaging in censorship continues, from payment processor Stripe to music streaming service Spotify. The widespread nature of this phenomenon proves that tech’s willingness to censor and suppress doesn’t stem from the size of a company. Big Tech, Medium Tech, it doesn’t matter: This problem affects virtually the entire industry, and it springs from a deeper source.

As a tech entrepreneur with experience in Silicon Valley and Seattle, I’ve seen that source firsthand. Tech companies recruit from increasingly radicalized universities, while setting up shop in increasingly radicalized cities. The result is an overpowering ideological uniformity that’s dead-set on its own rightness and dangerously hostile to disagreement.

The editorial states:

Americans deserve better. We need new tech – the kind that respects free speech, religious belief, individual liberty, human dignity, and broadly speaking, American ideals. And we need new tech leaders, from across the political spectrum, who will make that vision a reality.