American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard (by "liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by the dominant wing of the Democratic Party).
For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of "hate speech” to mean "views that make us uncomfortable,” and then demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not protect “hate speech." Their political culture has long inculcated them to believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship.
Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful.
When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being "Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is "disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die. Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely.
This "disinformation" term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, “misinformation.” It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of "disinformation.” Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard.
The data proving a deeply radical authoritarian strain in Trump-era Democratic Party politics is ample and have been extensively reported here. Democrats overwhelmingly trust and love the FBI and CIA. Polls show they overwhelmingly favor censorship of the internet not only by Big Tech oligarchs but also by the state. Leading Democratic Party politicians have repeatedly subpoenaed social media executives and explicitly threatened them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more aggressively — a likely violation of the First Amendment given decades of case law ruling that state officials are barred from coercing private actors to censor for them, in ways the Constitution prohibits them from doing directly.
That's the opening and he's writing about the efforts to cancel Joe Rogan.
I want to thank Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Their stupidity and hate led me to SPOTIFY. We're now listening -- my girlfriend and I -- to SPOTIFY and to Joe Rogan on it.
C.I. and Ava had a great piece in today's Hilda's Mix about how Neil and Joni are the new PRMC. Remember them? Tipper Gore and some other priss pots trying to censor Prince, Sheena Easton and others? Tight ass creeps. That's Neil Young and Joni Mitchell now.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Mike Papantonio: Julian Assange has been granted the opportunity to appeal his extradition to the US, to the UK’s highest court. Thank goodness. Here’s what this, this story. I, every, you know my, you know my angle on this story is here we have these liberal snowflake types that used to love Assange when he was disclosing that the CIA was, was, was spying on us, or when he talked about mass surveillance, or when he talked about disclosing drone killings where we were using drones to kill people, or when he disclosed financials, where people are keeping money offshore. He was their hero. He was the snow, he was the snowflake liberal hero. Then what happens? They blame him for the Hillary loss, Hillary lost because she’s just incompetent. But they blame him and now all of a sudden he’s a villain. What’s your take on it?
Farron Cousins: I, I, I mean, the man has already spent essentially nine years locked up, right. You know, through his time in the Ecuadorian embassy, he has now been in prison for going on three years in conditions that even, you know, international human rights groups have said, what’s happening to him over in the UK right now is torture. There is no question, this is torture, what’s happening to this man. And they’re trying to lock him up because all he did was publish the documents from other individuals as an outlet. You know, outlets have all kinds of privileges here in the United States, but we don’t want to give it to him because he exposed the secrets about how horrible the government really can be across, you know, Democrat and Republican administrations.
Mike Papantonio: But Hillary takes him and he, Hillary wraps him around Russia, wraps him around this is the only reason I lost the election because of Assange.
Farron Cousins: The Podesta emails.
Mike Papantonio: And all the liberal snowflakes buy into it. Never ask the question, what did he do to disclose what was going on in this country? That never would’ve, it’s just like, it’s just like, it’s just like Snowden. It, it’s, it’s just like Manning. These people, or Dan, Daniel Ellsberg. So they’re villains? They’re villains because he takes, he didn’t intend to destroy Hillary’s election. She destroyed herself. I think she’s gonna do it again, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It’s actually looking like that. And an important thing to remember is that after WikiLeaks published those Podesta emails that made him, you know, hated with the Democrats, her poll numbers didn’t move. Her poll numbers did not move downward in a real negative way till late October, when Comey came out and did his press conference. You can see it correct, you know, absolute clear as day correlation. It wasn’t because of him.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we all need to understand that these attacks on him, if they are successful and unfortunately they, they probably will be, it’s not gonna end with him. They’re not gonna say good. We got him. This is all of journalism that is at risk right now.
Mike Papantonio: Totally.
As the lead attorney for the New York Times in the “Pentagon Papers” case in 1971, I’ve been doing a slow burn ever since over the government’s behavior in that instance: lies, disregard of court rules, arrogance, destruction of documents. All of this was brought to mind earlier this week when a British court hinted in the Julian Assange case that the U.S. government has acted in the same way once again.
It asked Britain’s supreme court to determine the appropriateness of a late filing by the government that completely undercut a ruling that Assange could NOT be extradited to the U.S. This followed British trial court Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who was hearing Assange’s extradition case, ruling that Assange might commit suicide if held in a U.S. prison in solitary confinement under what is called Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) and, so, he could not be extradited.
As soon as she announced her decision, the U.S. government filed assurances that Assange would not be held in that kind of detention, although it reserved the right to revoke the assurance if circumstances changed.
The judge was unmoved by this assurance, but she was reversed on appeal. The U.K.’s supreme court has now asked to consider the timeliness of this filing.
I do not believe the U.S. government’s assurances are worth the paper on which they have been written. Its behavior in this case has been rampant. Most outrageously, the CIA discussed a plot to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was holed up, and to kill him. The CIA also tapped into conversations in the Ecuadorian Embassy, including those with Assange’s lawyers.
There is not much question whether all of this is true. There was testimony about it in open court, and Mike Pompeo, the CIA director at the time and later secretary of State during the Trump administration, has conceded that there is “some truth” in the foregoing.
I do not pretend to be particularly familiar with the extradition laws of the U.K. But common sense tells me that you deliver highly important documents about a case — such as government assurances — before the case begins, not after it has been decided. U.K. counsel representing the U.S. disagrees, saying he can deliver documents when he wants and if he loses the appeal, he will start the extradition proceedings all over again.
This is the very same arrogance that was on display in the Pentagon Papers case, in which then-U.S. Solicitor General Erwin Griswold said the usual rules of evidence did not apply. His view of the law manifested itself in his introduction of new evidence in the case anytime the government was so moved. The claims were always extravagant: Publication of the new evidence would be a disaster for the country’s national security, etc., etc. They never were. Indeed, most of them turned out to be previously published.
Four French MPs are pushing for Julian Assange to be offered asylum in France amid the WikiLeaks founder’s ongoing fight against extradition from the UK to the US.
Jennifer De Temmerman, Jean Lassalle, Cedric Villani and Francois Ruffin are due to speak at a press conference in Paris on 1 February where they will explain why Assange -- currently in prison in the UK -- should be given sanctuary in France.
Pak is famous for his NFT sale of the artwork Mass hosted by Nifty Gateway which in theory made him the most expensive living artist, knocking Jeff Koons off the top spot.
In the curiously designed sale, which brought in $91.8 million, 28,000 buyers bought 266,445 units of a Pak artwork that could, in theory, be combined into a single NFT owned by a single buyer worth the eye-popping, multimillion-dollar total.
Julian Assange is an Australian editor, publisher and founder of WikiLeaks. Earlier, the US charged him with hacking government computers and espionage after he obtained and published hundreds of thousands of classified documents between 2010 and 2011. However, Assange won the right to ask the Supreme Court to block his extradition to the US, allowing his lawyers 14 days to make their case.
In the latest comments, al-Sadr, who leads Sadrist Movement, reiterated his previous stances on the cabinet formation. In a televised speech, he openly opposed ex-PM Nour al-Maliki's participation in the new "national majority government." He held that he asked Hadi al-Amiri and Qais al-Khazali, leaders of two large blocs, to join the government but not al-Maliki, a proposal they turned down. The powerful cleric now seems more self-confident in confrontation of his rivals after federal court last week ruled the outcomes of the first session of the parliament were legal and thus not annullable.
To al-Sadr's frustration, however, the Shiite Coordination Framework (SCF), a bloc of Shiite parties excluding Sadrist Movement, insists on al-Maliki's role in forming the next government, and its leading political figures have stated that either al-Maliki will be part of the majority coalition or they will not join the government.
Ali al-Fatlawi, one of the leaders of the Fatah coalition, announced on Friday that the SCF has refused fo join a coalition government with al-Sadr and Sunnis without al-Maliki and informed al-Sadr of the decision. Now more than any other time in the past, Sadr-Maliki differences are on the Iraqi politics surface and this raises questions about the future possibilities and the reason behind al-Sadr's opposition to al-Maliki.
Continuation of differences or unwanted ceasefire
The tension between two leaders in the current situation makes unlikely any agreement and reconciliation between them, and the Sadrists, along with their Sunni and Kurdish allies, intend to form a national majority government, excluding the SCF. But looking at the history of politics and governance in different countries, there is a golden rule that suggests there is no permanent friendship and enmity in politics. Therefore, despite the current differences, it is also possible that a ceasefire takes place between al-Maliki and al-Sadr. A clear example of this is the alliance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with the National Freedom Party in Turkey, once political enemies, in 2018. Despite their conflict of views, the two Iraqi political leaders are not unlikely to reconcile.
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