Image by Gerd Altmann
Matt Taibbi talked in London about what he and Michael Shellenberger found in the Twitter files. He realized the free speech battle has evolved into something new — where reality is altered and people are coached into forgetting what they saw, and censoring themselves. A kind of mass digital brainwashing.
In the Twitter Files there was a sinister pattern of “deamplifying” people’s true stories, their experiences, and then deamplifying the person themselves. Running parallel with this was a program to reduce our language, our world into a polarized one-nil, good-bad, us-them division where all shades of complexity were extinguished — so people who had vaccines but didn’t like mandates were anti-vaxxers, and people who had some vaccines, the injured, the unvaccinated — were all “anti-vaxxers”. This was a dystopia George Orwell predicted — the binary existence where there are no shades of gray. There is no safe middle ground. There is only rightthink and wrongthink.
The Elite War on Free Thought
Matt Taibbi, Racket News
Michael and I are here to tell a horror story that concerns people from all countries.
What Michael and I were looking at [in The Twitter files] was something new, an Internet-age approach to political control that uses brute digital force to alter reality itself. We certainly saw plenty of examples of censorship and de-platforming and government collaboration in those efforts. However, it’s clear that the idea behind the sweeping system of digital surveillance combined with thousands or even millions of subtle rewards and punishments built into the online experience, is to condition people to censor themselves.
In fact, after enough time online, users will lose both the knowledge and the vocabulary they would need to even have politically dangerous thoughts. What Michael calls the Censorship-Industrial Complex is really just the institutionalization of orthodoxy, a vast, organized effort to narrow our intellectual horizons.
Stanford Uni operated The Virality Project, where Google, Twitter and Facebook shared notes to work to suppress any realities the elite or Deep State didn’t want people to share:
They compared notes on how to censor or deamplify certain content. The ostensible mission made sense, at least on the surface: it was to combat “misinformation” about the pandemic, and to encourage people to get vaccinated. When we read the communications to and from Stanford, we found shocking passages.
One suggested to Twitter that it should consider as “standard misinformation on your platform… stories of true vaccine side effects… true posts which could fuel hesitancy” as well as “worrisome jokes” or posts about things like “natural immunity” or “vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway.”
The language erases the spectrum of opinions and leaves only Good and unGood labels:
A person who talks about being against vaccine passports may express support for the vaccine elsewhere, but the Virality Project believed “concerns” about vaccine passports were driving “a larger anti-vaccination narrative,” so in this way, a pro-vaccine person may be anti-vax.
This deters people from tinkering with mild “alternate opinions”. It’s been going on for years in the skeptical world. All skeptics are “climate deniers”, even if they agree with the IPCC and just think the economics of climate change is bonkers.
The Good People and The UnGood
When the binary reduction is applied to people then a person becomes the bad thing they said once — one wrong opinion means everything they say is suspect. As Taibbi says:
We saw NGOs and agencies like the FBI or the State Department increasingly targeting speakers, not speech. The Virality Project brought up the cases of people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The posts of such “repeat offenders,” they said, are “almost always reportable.” They encouraged content moderators to make assumptions about people, and not to look on a case-by-case basis. In other words, they saw good and ungood people, and the ungood were “almost always reportable.”
It is cancel culture today. In the stoneage, it was ostracism. It’s very effective.
The Social Media Social-Credit-Score
A form of the Chinese Social Credit Score is already here. Social media companies were scoring people and putting some of them on blacklists, and then in some cases even blacklisting others in their networks. It is guilt by association.
Over and over we saw algorithms trying to electronically score a person’s good-or-ungoodness. We found a Twitter report that put both Wikileaks and Green Party candidate Jill Stein in a Twitter “denylist,” a blacklist that makes it harder for people to see or search for your posts. Stein was put on a denylist called is_Russian because an algorithm determined she had too many beliefs that coincided with banned people, especially Russian banned people.
“It’s more than a speech crisis, it’s a humanity crisis”
If you apply these techniques fifty million, a hundred million, a billion times, or a billion billion times, people will soon learn to feel how certain accounts are deamplified, and others are not. They will self-sort and self-homogenize.
We’re building a global mass culture that sees everything in black and white, fears difference, and abhors memory. It’s why people can’t read books anymore …
We have been complaining about censorship, and it’s important to do that. But they are taking aim at people in a way that will make censorship unnecessary, by building communities of human beings with no memory and monochrome perception. This is more than a speech crisis. It’s a humanity crisis. I hope we’re not too late to fix it.
Read it all on Matt Taibbi’s blog “Racket Media”.
h/t David E
Social Media Eye by Gerd Altmann | Photo by Mike Renpening | Icons by Arek Socha
Australia mulls ‘fake news’ fines for Big Tech
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-25/fines-to-punish-online-misinformation-under-new-draft-bill/102521500
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I wonder if the legislation (if passed) means political parties will have to advertise truthfully on social media? The misinformation and disinformation spread in election campaigns would be prime content for removal. Along with climate alarmism.
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Here’s the proposed legislation.
https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/communications-legislation-amendment-combatting-misinformation-and-disinformation-bill2023-june2023.pdf
There are some exemptions such as:
Plus some others.
.
A scary attack on free speech.
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excluded under s35 Limitation—electoral and referendum matters
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Yeah. I see they’ve managed to get “authorised” content exempt from ACMA codes.
One rule for them and one rule for us.
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Professional news content is allowed, even if it’s manifestly fraudulent? Because most of it’s just leftist media releases reprinted under the journalist’s byline.
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“Professional news content is allowed, even if it’s manifestly fraudulent?”
yep. if it’s the msm, government or education, they can say whatever they like.
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I bags being the judge!
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There’s the rub.
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It is very unhealthy to polarise every issue.
At risk is the ability to discern and cherish reality and truth.
“Social” Media is rapidly heading to a social credit system,
where banking, travel, employment can be spiked for
“Wrong think”.
What is remarkable is that people are embracing fantasy
like CC, Alphabet people, Battery vehicles with a religious
zeal when a few minutes of critical rebuttal would expose
the fallacy of their dogma.
As an aside, the population of the world is about to belly flop
as the increase is from longevity gains that will lead to fewer
young people to work/ pay tax/ care for the oldies. The decline
of natalism is celebrated by the CC cadres.
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Australian e-safety watchdog demands answers from Twitter over ‘300% rise in hate speech’.
Since Elon’s takeover he has restored 62 thousand ‘banned’ voices to the platform that has somehow increased hate speech by 300% despite there being 400 million users worldwide.
AND the Australian government wants answers or it will fine Twitter $475000.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-twitter-australia-fine-475000-online-hate-2023-6
The implication being that these previously banned voices (this .015% of all twitter users) are prolific hate speakers.
Australia is the censor that George Orwell warned us about…
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The Left have so overused and misused terms like “hate speech” and “National Socialist” (the abbreviated German name) to mean simply anyone that disagrees with them or the Official Narrative that they have rendered these terms essentially meaningless.
It’s tragic, because there are cases of genuine haters and genuine National Socialists but like “the boy who cried wolf” the Left have ensured that no one will take notice of such cases.
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David, your comments bring to mind the abhorrent overuse- misuse of the word ‘racist’ that has been used as a generalised character slur to denounce an unacceptable opinion!
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You could probably put DM’s use of the word “Left” into that basket as well. Replace the word “Racist” with “Leftist”.
We all have a bias.
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MP, I only use it when I am describing said individuals. It so happens it comes up a lot when talking about anti-freedom forces and those pushing certain social control narratives like energy starvation or defective covid vaccines and policies.
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I am not being critical of you, it’s just the term leftist, as you say with the political side, they are a Uniparty. I know people on the left and they are not “ists”, you are doing the same thing by grouping, missing the ones that should be in that group and including ones that should not. Just call them for what they are, Communists.
I agree with most of your posts, and you are doing a great job of highlighting the issues.
The term leftist just grates me.
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Ok. Noted.
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‘Just call them for what they are, Communists.’
Who are we talking about? The utopian socialists are not communists, they believe in free enterprise and private property.
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EG, glad you rocked up. Perfect example, left bent but not an “ist”.
The utopian socialists, only exist in your head, which harms nobody 🙂
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‘ … only exist in your head …’
I’m not alone and we have a proud history going back to the Renaissance.
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I’m sure there is a whole party happening in your head.
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Mike, agreed. I should have included that, although I guess it also comes under “hater”.
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What term to use? They often call themselves progressives which is a complete misnomer. How can rolling back, the enlightenment and the reformation, and the industrial revolution, and the scientific method, and free speech, and academic freedom, and destroying the traditional family, be progress? They are regressives no matter how you look at it, but most people would not know what you are talking about if you used that term to describe them.
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Dave, or Mike or David, or anyone else. Why give leftists the time of day? Why bother even thinking about what they say?
When your next door neighbour’s kid tells you he’s Spiderman, or declares that YOU are The Joker, or maybe King Canute….do you spend all day worrying about it?
A simple bored “Yes Dear. Of course dear” will p*ss these adult children (leftists) off / shut them up. Do not react to their mental afflictions.
BTW: There are loads of websites explaining how to handle the mentally ill, the leftist, etc should they be “in your face”. If you reckon they need some sort of assistance to get over their leftist delusions learn how to calm them down. Try the Dementia Australia site, for example!
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Yandex search generates a cornucopia of venues of which the first six are https://www.dementia.org.au/, https://www.dementia.com.au/, https://www.australiandementianetwork.org.au/, https://www.facebook.com/DementiaAustralia/, https://twitter.com/DementiaAus and for training purposes https://dta.com.au/; I wouldn’t know where to begin.
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The term fascist has also been redefined as a type of right wing extremism. But it really is government control of seemily private institutions and the means of production. Isn’t this what we are seeing with big tech and the Gov picking winners and losers? If socialism is Gov ownership of the means of production it not much different.
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Fascism is a form of socialism and on the Left side of politics anyway. Its philosopher was Giovanni Gentile, a Hegelian Marxist who co-wrote “La dottrina del fascismo” with Mussolini. National Socialism was fascism with an extra racial and nationalist element. Under fascism certain corporations are allowed to exist but only if they strictly comply with the interests of the state in so-called “public-private” partnerships. Where have we heard that term before? Oh that’s right, the WEF. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/how-to-harness-transformative-potential-public-private-partnerships/
Also see article:
https://fee.org/articles/theres-no-denying-the-socialist-roots-of-fascism/
Also see:
Dinesh D’Souza “The Big Lie: Exposing the (National Socialist) Roots of the American Left”
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True, but more to the point, most of the genuine hate speech comes from the left. The Labor party (think Mean Girls) and the Greens party (you know it’s pretty much all of them).
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I am finding exactly the same phenomenon with the war in Ukraine. Evil Russia very bad, Putin the Anti Christ. Ukraine heroes and Zelensky the saint, lecturing the UN on right and wrong like Greta Thunberg.
Any suggestion that there has been a real murderous civil war raging for a decade is considered nonsense, fake news. Aocording to the press the war started with Russia ‘unprovoked’ invasion. And the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines MH17 in 2014 was just Russian villainy not a real civil war.
According to this narrative evil Russia blew up their pipeline to Germany when they could have simply switched it off. Similarly they blew up their own dam which provided fresh water to Crimea, when they could have opened the gates. So whatever happens, this view of mad evil Russians driven by an evil dictator is the only one allowed.
The reality is very different, but you are not allowed say so. According to the media, your choices are zero.
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And you might remember when America worked to eject evil Russia from Afghanistan by arming Osama Bin Laden not least with Stinger missiles and thousands of young Russians went home in coffin planes, the Black Tulips. Then America marched into Afghanistan. How did that black and white view work out with Russia the bad guys and Bin Laden the hero of the oppressed? How many American lives did that cost? And 911.
It is happening again with Israel and the Palestinians. And it has forced Saudi into an alliance with Iran and China where they and the Emirates were normalizing relations with Israel under Trump and the Abraham accords. This was not to be allowed.
So the Russians bad, Israel bad story is really upsetting world politics. Just as the old Albania/Kosovo good, Serbia/Russia bad story is set to erupt again.
But for decades the bad Russia story has provided a convenient cover story for the Bidens and the Democrats and obvious Biden bribery charges from Ukraine and China and the Laptop from Hell barely make the press and are denied in writing by all of the secret service. And the Clinton garage file server was buried like the Biden document scandal from when he was just a Senator. Nothing is to be allowed to stop Democrat success at the polls. Electing a demented geriatric Biden again is looking possible.
Controlling information and cancelling opposition in the Press and on the internet is now standard practice. And the control of Twitter by Elon Musk is allowing the world to see how deep the rot had gone. Especially with the Wuhan viral attack on the world. And the direct involvement of the US intelligence community in the cover up. Pelosi called stopping flights from China Xenophobia. And then criticized Trump for not acting fast enough.
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Not only was this not to be allowed, but it was not to be reported. The MSM completely ignored this major international relations development. It’s like it never happened. I estimate that 95 out of 100 Americans know nothing about it.
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But why did President Obama allow Vice President Biden direct control of Ukraine affairs of all places in the world?
Why did Joe and Hunter get so involved in Ukraine?
Why would Hunter Biden receive a million dollars a year salary from the Ukraine Burisma energy company with no expertise at all? He didn’t go there or speak the language or know the industry.
What was the US policy objective when Joe Biden demanded the firing of the State Prosecutor who was investigating Burisma as a condition of US military aid? It was openly admitted, even boasted about by Joe Biden.
And isn’t that precisely the alleged crime for which Trump for was impeached? The infamous telephone call?
And how can the facts be flipped so easily to make Trump responsible, even impeached for Biden’s admitted crime? And the one who was openly paid for absolutely nothing was Hunter Biden and the Big Guy. How can the US press and intelligence community not notice?
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Careful Ted, you’re starting to sound like me! When Hanrahan gets up he’ll give you a hard time!
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Nobody asks the question; What did Obama get out of Joe’s dealings? It’s as if he is untouchable – why?
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And no one ordered the immediate evacuation of all troops from Afghanistan on the night of 13th August 2021? No reason was given and no one was told. The Military even had to order the soldiers back to help civilians escape.
Their allies were not even warned. Local who risked their lives were not told. And the many billions of dollars in lethal equipment and munitions were just abandoned?
But the media asked no questions. Look it up on the internet and every discussion makes out it was a staged orderly withdrawal over a month, not an overnight flight. There is now no history of what actually happened. History has been completely rewritten to remove the fact that everyone was ordered out immediately and only one person could do that.
And again no one was warned, not the media, the allied countries including Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany and many more. No questions. Just get out, if you can.
America had been involved in that conflict since 1979 when Russia invaded Afghanistan and in 42 years there was precious little debate. And then out in 24 hours without explanation.
It’s not just censorship. It’s a blackout from the White House down. And a rewriting of history with the staged withdrawal being a long planned and organized move, not total evacuation in one night without notice.
We had the same thing in Victoria where Daniel Andrews investigated himself and his decision to use a private company for security and they hired students over the internet with no training and no authority. Judge Coates decided that no one made a decision. It happened ‘organically’. And it has all been forgotten, as intended.
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I caught the end of one of those television shows on border security where a Ukrainian as denied entry for not being able to convince the border security that he was on a holiday rather than being an illegal immigrant. In the end he admitted he was trying to escape Ukraine to avoid conscription where he would be recorded to fight his own countrymen. That made me think that the news on the war may not be accurate.
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It’s a civil war. Ukraine as a country is newer than even Australia. And the majority language is Russian. Even Zelensky speaks Russian natively and Ukranian badly. Almost everyone except in the old Polish areas around Lviv is either Russian or half Russian. And in the East they are solid Russians. Sure there is the very old fear of the Catholic Poles vs Russian Orthodox. But really this is a modern civil war between governments and in large part a revolt by so many Eastern Ukranians against the oppressive fascist government in Kiev. But fascism is dead, surely? There are German tanks back in Kiev today supporting the government. And the WEF certainly makes the case to me that fascism is alive and powerful on the world stage, international socialism in partnership with big business.
Crimea was only ceded to Ukraine by Kruschev in 1954 and any student of history might remember that when France and England attacked Russia last time it was through Crimea in 1855. The time before it was France in 1812 with Napoleon. And more recently the Kaiser in 1916 and then Hitler in 1941 and Japan. But in the press it’s always the Russians who are to blame for their own misery. Even in Afghanistan.
Turkey was the ally of Britain in 1855 when England and France fought Russia. Florence Nightingale’s hospital was in Istanbul. So I am appalled that after WW1 England occupied Istanbul and Greece started a British backed war in 1922, producing a terrible diaspora of 5 million people after the British backed Greeks were beaten by Ataturk. There is such treachery and opportunism in international affairs while the people are told it is all about right and wrong, good guys and evil opposition. You might remember this treachery in Lawrence of Arabia. And Churchill in his naughty paper privately ceded Poland to Stalin once for a free hand in Greece and India. The betrayed Polish pilots who fought so well in the Battle of Britain were not even allowed march in the victory parade. Then Churchill toured the US wanting the US to invade Russia!
It cannot be a failure to know history. It is self censorship and today US Democrat propaganda supported by the press. Trump says he could end the war in a day. So the press will work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. Censorship is key.
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“It cannot be a failure to know history”.
Where did I miss your mention of The Holodomor? Just 90 years ago.
That was a genocidal act. This is a genocidal war. The two are the same deal. Inseparable.
And at #4.4.1, the call for a ballot? After half the population has been driven out and replaced with ethnic Russians?
Come on!
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Ted,
Anyway you look at Ukraine it has been a battleground for a long time . Stalin was a paranoid monster who killed millions of Russians too . Ukraine fought on both sides in WW2 and was fighting the Soviet Union led by Stephan Bandera(funded by the CIA) until it broke up . If the “West” stopped funding this war the dying would stop .
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The Soviet famine killed people throughout the Soviet Union. Whether it was a genocidal act directed at Ukanians is where the propoganda blurs the lines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933
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The holomador was not racism predicated on the Ukraninans being different. Rather it was a class struggle, pure Marxism.
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“So I am appalled that after WW1 England occupied Istanbul and Greece started a British backed war in 1922,”
It is almost impossible to keep track of the conflicts that have occurred in the regions you mention dating way back to 1779 when the Russian empire annexed the Crimea. Little wonder there is so much hate between the different ethnic groups even before you consider the religious element. Certainly the forced migrations produced many a bad mix.
Too many long held grudges with too many scores to settle including Greece/Turkey with the following dove tailing into your circa 1922 comments:
“An unknown number of Greeks, perhaps 100,000, went from Western Anatolia to Greece before World War I began, affected by anti-Greek economic pressure after the Balkan Wars. Aided especially by the British, the Greek Army invaded Western Anatolia in 1919. They immediately began attacks on Turkish villages and cities, ultimately forcing 1.2 million Turks from their homes and an unknown number from Thrace (what had remained of Ottoman Europe after the Balkan Wars). The Turkish Nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal, defeated the Greeks by 1922. A post-war agreement exchanged the Greeks of Turkey (excepting Istanbul) for the Turks of Greece (excepting Eastern Thrace). 850,000 Greeks were exchanged for 480,000 Turks. 530,000 Turks and 310,000 Greeks had died.”
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The numbers I had were 10x larger. But who really knows? Who can you trust? My point was that in a previous war of misinformation the continuing desire to expand Empire and crush the Ottomans and the Russians was real. And successful in terms of the Ottomans. And the public in Australia and Britain were fed a steady diet of misinformation. In 1865 the people of South Melbourne ran to the beaches with shovels and pick axes to fight off the reported Russian invasion. All misinformation.
What relevance is this to the topic? One of the problem of disagreeing with the official explanation of what happened, the official line. You have to self censor if you want to prosper. Questioning the official explanation of world events can have devastating consequences for the individual.
Self censorship is the topic. And it has been a fact of life for millennia.
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…and pro-Ukraine posters, signs, flags etc are being removed around the world as people finally open their eyes…
Except for das gubermint – another $74M for Zelensky, well on the way to billionaire status.
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And commentators in Moscow are saying that the war should be stopped with a cease fire and temporary boundaries agreed. And let the people decide by a supervised ballot, not foreign players. This happened in Crimea and 98% voted to stay in Russia, but foreign commentators said that must be rigged. I doubt it, having been there on Russia Day. And there are those little things like the Military Pension in Russia is 3x larger.
What is really a puzzle is why Ukraine and small Moldova have the very poorest people in Europe rife with terrible diseases like tuberculosis. And no one thinks this is the fault of the government especially when Urkraine is the second biggest exporter of Wheat in the world after Russia itself. The Ukranian government would be better described as a Kleptocracy and the Bidens have been part of that unless someone can give a credible reason for Hunter Biden being on the board of Burisma. It’s of zero interest to the press.
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Can we discuss the free speech aspects of the Russia Ukraine situation here, but move general Russia-Ukraine discussion to the Unthreadeds thanks? This has gone far off topic.
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Whatever you do , don’t mention the war 🙂
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Sure. But it was my example of a subject being painted only in black and white. Mainly by the press as many are not on twitter. Twitter could not even be called conversation.
And the censorship is often just by omission. I buy two newspapers and read two more online and Breitbart but on any topic it is hard to get facts unfiltered by opinions.
However perhaps that has always been the case.
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If it’s any consolation TdeF, I learned more about the whole Ukraine situation from about 1/2 dozen of your comments than I ever did from 10 years of MSM reporting.
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,, and that gives an insight into “how people are being conditioned into censoring themselves”.
Which seems to be “on topic”.
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Do you mean that moderation/moderators should be removed? Glad to hear it, although it will never ever be put into practice. As this site is proof of exactly what Taibbi is writing about.
PS I don’t expect to see this make the comments, but the absence will highlight my point
[Feel free to create your own blog and take legal risk for comments from those who bear no responsibility. You’ve no idea how many comments contain threats of violence, racist comments, incitement, etc, that the Mods intercept. If you want to have “absolute freedom of speech” then do the work, pay the costs, take the risks, of platforming your own blog. The reason there are Mods is because some commenters lack self control and common sense.- LVA]
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Peter Fitzroy, this site would not exist if the quiet voices on one side of a scientific debate were not censored so effectively out of the legacy media and Establishment forums and the financial river of money from vested interests.
When you write letters to the ABC protesting that Nobel Prize winning skeptics, professors, thousands of career scientists and Australian taxpayers are not even allowed to speak their mind on the ABC we’ll consider your complaints to have some moral standing above zero.
Don’t hesitate to share your protests about the lack of free speech on government funded forums…
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So you support censorship, and would prefer self censoring, which means that you are the arbiter of what does or does not get published, exactly the same as those you rail against. That seems illogical to me.
Also you are inconsistent in the application of the incredibly broad rules listed in your guide. Examples abound where you allow attacks, ad Homs and logical fallacies, but you hold some like me to a much higher standard than other, very frequent commentators.
Why don’t you just ban me completely, and close your echo chamber completely, or is that impossible given the software you use
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Following site rules I should have banned you years ago for consistently breaching rules of logic and reason. But because there are no spokesmen for CAGW who are able to debate politely with logic and reason I figure the forum has to make do.
So it’s true, this site is sometimes inconsistent. I hold you to a lower standard than most others and take the time to edit your comments when the rules are that you should be able to edit [snip] yourself.
You are free to set up your own forum, and I fight for your right to run your own blog.
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Yes, Jo is absolutely right, you should be able to go (snip) yourself PF.
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See, you want self censorship.
“Now, who are the ones responsible for a vast majority of censorship, silencing, sacking/firing and deplatforming people? It’s obviously the Left, not conservatives and fellow rational thinkers”
now if I was to comment
“Now, who are the ones responsible for a vast majority of censorship, silencing, sacking/firing and deplatforming people? It’s obviously the Right, not progressives and fellow rational thinkers”
it would be redacted.
I am on permanent moderation, but what exactly did I do that is not done daily by other commenters.
“Yes, Jo is absolutely right, you should be able to go (snip) yourself PF.” – show me why this commentator should not be castigated?
that fact is you just want an echo chamber
“But because there are no spokesmen for CAGW who are able to debate politely with logic and reason I figure the forum has to make do.” you have not proved this – it is just an assertion, but in particular you refuse to apply logic or reasoning your own articles, or to most of the comments, and I refer to your recent post on the Antarctic ice in recent memory
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If I wanted an echo chamber, clearly I would not be publishing your comments. Keep digging eh?
There are skeptics here on permanent moderation too. Anyone who hijacks threads at the top, frequently goes off topic or commonly relies on ad hom or argument from authority, or who dominates threads, gets angry, posts the same repeated information etc will end up being moderated or even blocked.
I’ve published 4,500 comments from you here, yet you complain that you are censored. I have never stopped you posting scientific evidence supporting Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Where is the key evidence supporting your faith? You still can’t find it? If only you had evidence instead of fantasy whinges about imagined censorship…
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The question;
“show me why this commentator should not be castigated?”
It’s because women can’t, it’s impossible.
Only men can have that done to them.
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Peter, I guess the concept of letting idiots speak their minds and allowing others to think whatever they want about it, is so foreign to you that you ask to be banned….
You are priceless.
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NewsGuard is an example of “credibility” checkers used to push the Leftist agenda through their pseudo social credit system.
From Wiki.
If you get a bad rating, which most conservative organisations do, advertises won’t want to know you and search engines will derate or delete you.
PragerU are victims of bad ratings on NewsGuard.
In a recent email I got from PragerU:
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But wait! There’s more!
Australia has its own ‘Science Truth Factchecker’ now, sorting out all the fake science like Ivermectin working against Covid..
“Online tool Retractions Australia is tracking scientific papers that have been retracted – or pulled – by peer-reviewed journals. It is backed by leading research institute Neuroscience Research Australia . Retractions and scientific misconduct, once thought to be extremely rare, have come into sharp focus over the past decade as scientists have discovered more cases.
Ivermectin gained prominence as a treatment for COVID-19 based on a large number of fraudulent studies, some researchers argue…”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-lose-sleep-at-night-experts-fight-to-expose-science-fraud-in-australia-20230626-p5djj6.html
Of course its quite likely the Socialist Morning Herald is putting words into the mouth of Professor Simon Gandevia,, and he never actually mentioned Ivm at all! I will believe in it when they list Pfizer’s dodgy research.
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I saw this as well. If anyone cares to click on your smh link, scroll down to the 5th paragraph wherein Ivermectin is mentioned in the context of misrepresented scientific studies. I’d suggest the author has gone out of his way to insert that reference. It’s odd when one visits the Retractions Aus website and looks at the 489 retracted articles only to find that not one of those retracted articles contains any mention of Ivermectin. If you’re capable of critical thinking, it doesn’t stack up
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Jo says: ‘The language erases the spectrum of opinions…’
True. More fundamentally, banning truth abolishes reality.
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NewsGuard has set up operations in Australia and New Zimbabwe.
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How do you tell who’s telling the truth?
The ones trying to silence other people are the ones lying.
Now, who are the ones responsible for a vast majority of censorship, silencing, sacking/firing and deplatforming people? It’s obviously the Left, not conservatives and fellow rational thinkers.
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The remedy for bad speech, even hateful speech, is good speech, not to drive it underground where it will be far more dangerous.
The Left always censor because they know in their “hearts” (I use the term loosely because most modern Leftists are heartless) they know they can’t sustain a rational or civil argument, hence them always reverting to censorship, lawfare, legislation and violence to forcibly impose their point of view.
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I think the simple answer is to not those social media platforms. As far as I can see there isn’t one of them that is useful to educated intelligent people – they just cater to the chattering masses.
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But those are an extreme minority.
And this control of speech will be extended everywhere, including blogs like this.
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The Facebook message utility is useful. There are other options but Facebook is the one my wife uses to talk to grandchildren in other parts of the world.
I used Youtube as a means to provide video content on line that I could link to before cloud storage was readily available.
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The reality is that if one supports free speech then all views must be treated equally and published freely. This includes objectionable, insulting, false and unhinged views. Once you introduce any censorship, fact checkers or restrictions then you don’t have freedom of speech. It’s binary, black and white no greys. People, the public, must be the only filter operating through critique, ignoring and ridiculing the mad and the bad.
[Except for the Lawfare imposed on the platform host for actionable comments. Your position is only valid if no responsibility, whatsoever, of any kind, in any court, anywhere, can be applied to the website Host for anything that anyone might say. Give that a think. – LVA]
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Seems like an example of binary thinking. Isn’t there a spectrum of lines in the sand? In a crowded room if one person yells loudly — repeating the same phrase, aren’t they, in a sense, denying the right of everyone else in the room to put forward their own views?
If everyone else in the room wants free speech isn’t there a need to cultivate a set of rules to maximize the quiet voices? Everyone should get the chance to share their grievances, objections or insults at least once.
While rules of free speech across the whole of society are the most dangerous of all — what about smaller forums — set up to discuss particular aspects or for particular stakeholders.
There are vandals of free speech too. Censorship is not the only way to silence people. Excessive noise will silence people too.
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My statement was a technical generalisation, it obviously falls down a bit when it meets the real world. I do recognise that ‘personal’ blogs/small forums will control the narrative and that since everyone that visits is a guest they must follow the house rules. That said, that is technically a form of censorship – but I respect that right, as a guest. Unfortunately, house rules don’t scale up as Twitter, FB, etc. have shown.
On the lawfare issue, then that is plainly state censorship, but I totally understand why the host must be very careful.
BTW you’re doing a great job, which is why I visit.
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Thanks for understanding Steve.
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Steve, please follow the party line
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Australian Ministry of truth
https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/have-your-say/new-acma-powers-combat-misinformation-and-disinformation
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A quote from a Eugyppius article on Substack. He is German and commenting about an election outcome in Germany. It sounds a lot like Victoria under Andrews and also a lot like the Dems in the US bleating about “threats to Democracy” when they actually mean its just something they dont like.
“Democracy is when you want what the late-stage liberal system wants to give you, and the system gives it to you. If you don’t want what the system wants to give you, your preferences are undemocratic and the system gives it to you anyway. You’re free to protest the things the system hates, but if you protest the system or any of its agenda, that’s undemocratic and you’ll be water cannoned to protect democracy. You’re free to believe in the principles espoused by late-stage liberal democratic politicians, but if you dispute them, you’re a danger to the free world and should be arrested.”
https://www.eugyppius.com
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We are entering a Titanic battle between good (free speech) and severe censorship by the Left of all our information. Plus punishment for unauthorised thoughts, i.e. thought crime.
This will be reinforced by various governments, especially fanatical globalist/UN/WEF ones like Australia’s with a social credit system, extensive biometrics including DNA databases and a fully digital currency system. And of course, there will be severe restrictions on your energy use, and Fifteen Minute Cities to control your movements. All your Internet activity will be logged and monitored with AI. (In Australia, for a number of years now, ISPs and phone companies have been required to log web accesses and phone calls.)
It is the worst of dystopian nightmares, the worst elements of fiction such as Nineteen Eighty Four, Atlas Shrugged, Brave New World, The Time Machine (Eloi vs Morlocks), Escape from New York, Fahrenheit 451, Gattaca, Judge Dredd, Logan’s Run, The Matrix, Soylent Green, Minority Report, The Plague, The Postman, Quarantine, The Running Man, THX1138, V for Vendetta and Contagion. All rolled into one.
Perhaps you can name more.
It’s all been imagined or foreseen, it’s all happening.
It’s all part of The Plan.
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And they say, life imitates art, I think art is the script of life.
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The government will make it more expensive for the big social media players. With some luck they will view Australia as a lost cause and withdraw services. That will improve Australian productivity. It will also eliminate the soapbox for dogma.
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“To condition people to censor themselves…”
or the government will do it:
https://firstfactcheck.substack.com/p/a-warning-to-australia-forget-about
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in 2020 before my father died (saving one life was worth it, just not his) we got onto the topic of trannies, my father stated he did not want to talk about that, I tried to point out this is exactly what the government wanted and it was our responsibility to talk about it, often. My father thought he was the smartest person in the world, sadly he left the world dumber then he came into it.
The rest of the family are close to completing their retardation, for the good of the collective.
Thanks for these articles and keeping the issues up front. We need these little nudges.
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To be fair, it must be very difficult for a lot of people to have their entire belief system stripped away and to realise that virtually everything they were told is a lie. Wouldn’t this be equivalent to telling someone your entire life has maybe been a waste ? It’s less terrifying for a lot of people to just take the blue pill, we shouldn’t judge them too harshly, because ultimately that’s what TPTB want !
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Here’s today’s version from the ABC.
Sounds to me that the proposal is that ACMA replace all that Twitter was before Musk opened it up. With Australian bureaucrats doing the uncontrolled censoring.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-27/misinformation-disinformation-australia-proposed-laws-crackdown/102524764
Cheers
Dave B
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Scary.
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I always thought the Internet would free people from tyranny and guarantee free speech. All pro-freedom people thought so.
Instead, it’s been weaponised by The Forces of Darkness and will be used to enslave us.
The Left destroy everything.
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Who owns or controls NewsGuard?
Some of them are Big Pharma.
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If we don’t watch out the Anglophiles + the western countries in general will be as heavily censored as Putin’s Russia or China or Iran or Nth Korea etc.
I trust Conservatives more than any other group and most Aussies are still socially conservative irrespective of their voting preferences.
But most ordinary people are reluctant to speak up for themselves and their beliefs.
I talked to a group of friends recently about the so called Voice nonsense and all were strongly against and would certainly vote NO in November.
But there still seemed to be a timidity about whether they could say so in public. I said we should just say we don’t believe in this new Apartheid and we should believe in one vote one value REGARDLESS of race.
No so called special Race should be given a second chance to enhance their ongoing agendas because they have a special place in our Constitution.
If the Voice was successful it would make Australia ungovernable because everything could be challenged in the courts if the Parliament disagreed with the new APPOINTMENTs from the special Aboriginal ARISTOCRACY.
Here’s a very reasonable message from Senator Jacinta Price where she clearly states her reasons for voting NO at the referendum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-rqFVadjo
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“If we don’t watch out the Anglophiles + the western countries in general will be as heavily censored as Putin’s Russia or China or Iran or Nth Korea etc.”
What make you think they are censored? Reading Western propaganda?
NOTHING from the West can be believed, the same as those countries you just mentioned. We float in a sea of lies, and only the internet has made us see the water. It certainly hasn’t helped discern truth from fiction, but at least it has made us aware of the options..
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KP,
Its amazing the amount of information on the internet – the problem is the amount of lies/misinformation/spin/misdirection that is also available . You can conduct a search that will provide multiple choices with most of them contradictory. Even the meaning of language/words has been changed . Accept nothing, Believe no-one, and Check everything . And follow the money…
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You won’t see too many (or any) Leftists complain about the suppression of free speech because they benefit from it.
E.g. they are either billionaire Elites peddling their defective wares such as wind, solar and covid vaccine products; or parasites such as senior public serpents, trade union leaders; or other people, often psychopaths, who seek power and control over others. Or simply the dumbed-down masses who love the “free stuff” provided by the Nanny State.
It all comes at the cost of your Liberty.
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‘Misinformation’ was twisted to coax,
More vaccines, more times for more folks,
So wrong-think got banned,
Truth-tellers got panned,
And censored for ‘worrisome jokes’.
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None of this is about objective truth. The modern Left don’t believe in that. They believe in post-modernism which is an ideology that denies the existence of objective truth. Truth is what they believe it to be. That’s why they use phrases like “my truth” not “the truth”. And almost nothing of what they believe is objectively true.
E.g. it is obvious that their beliefs thst:
There is a climate crisis.
That covid vaccines are “safe and effective”.
That men can become real women and vice versa.
That governments spending without limit is a good thing.
That freedom of speech is undesirable.
Etc. Etc.
Are objectively not true statements but it is “Their truth” and that’s what they demand to impose on everyone else with severe penalties if you don’t believe these things.
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I’m now at the point when a major news item breaks on MSM, my first thought is what is this story a red herring for? So, Chinese balloons, Titanic sub etc. The MSM run with these stories to cover up probably at least a 1/2 dozen events happening to adversely affect our lives. So much so that now there are various social media contributors who run weekly tweets, messages, updates etc titled ” the events you missed this past week while the MSM were reporting on ………..”. So, the more cynical would say the media ran with the Titanic sub story to cover up Hunter Biden’s slap on the wrist. But, I’m way past cynicism these days, a little bit of skepticism/cynicism is just the very least you can do as a media consumer to keep your sanity. Also, just because it happens in the US don’t think for a minute it wont be reported here in Australia. To me the biggest media pivot was the Ukraine conflict. Not so much the actual Russian activities but the reporting of it. Everyone going the blue/yellow emoji thing. The fact that it was timed for the great disappointment that was the COVID vaccines was a little bit more than coincidental. Omicron hit the world like a runaway train and basically the jibber jabs did squat. (IMHO). Not only that, the adverse effects stories were then just starting to really manifest. Something had to be done to divert the attention of the masses. If there is a story that the Virality Project/ Trusted News Initiative/ Ministry of Disinformation/Big pharma don’t like, the steps are ignore, censor or just obfuscate or pivot to the most ridiculous story you can muster. The more ridiculous the better. Look over there, a flying pig.
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I think this problem has always been with us, although now electronic media has magnified it. What could induce young parents to throw their firstborn infants into the fires of Baal? How could plain farmers and villagers burn half of their womenfolk at the stake? Over and over the power-hungry have manipulated culture and led ordinary working people into madness.
Human culture is intensely cohesive — we are herd animals. Communication empowers us to work together but it also mesmerizes us. Language itself, spoken or written, is a coding technology which creates virtual realities within our minds. When this is disorted by rulers and influencers it can become un-sane.
A society which succumbs to this disease is eventually weakened. It loses its creativity and vitslity, and will eventually be overtaken by healthier, stronger neighbors. Oddly this means that war could be seen as one cure for the disease.
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Sometimes I just sit back and look at whats going on and think, maybe their right, sometimes you have to kill the herd to stop the infection.
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I suspect the rainbow-alphabet crowd will take offence at that. 😆
Everything you see now has happened repeatedly through history, only the totalitarian actors have changed.
On a sidenote, did anyone note the anomaly for the NAB “outage” yesterday? I did. 😎
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Yep.
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They are perfectly on board with it – remember you either can or you cannot. There’s either 325 (and counting) different genders, men can become real women, etc, or it cannot happen. Binary…
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Censor your self so that no one else has to. The cryptocracy wants you to have the character of self-levelling concrete. Then you’ll be an easy walk-over for the bureaucrats.
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Deamplifying sounds a lot like brainwashing.
Repeat the lies and falsehoods often enough and the masses believe . .
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Skeptical about submersible safety? Critical of carbon fibre as a building material? Stockton Rush would call your views misinformation.
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The thinking is that brittle materials like carbon fibre and titanium have not only a use by date and the carbon they used for this hull had exceeded its aviation use by date but by use date. One of the earliest such craft was designed for a single descent only.
Like aircraft wings, Rush’s invention could only be flexed a limited number of times and he went down one too many times.
It was only a question of when it would suffer catastropic fracture. He had previously completely replaced the entire hull when they noted cracking noises on light compression. Nuclear submarines compress by inches at 300 metres, their depth limit. And each time you do that, the material weakens and fatigues. Aircraft are monitored for the number of times the wing root flexes. Bend anything metal often enough and it will break. And as the submersible had a pressure of 10,000 tons on the hull and even ascent time was 2 hours for 4km, it was a coin toss to go down. I doubt his passengers knew.
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The vastly expensive Australian move to short term uncontrollables is being questioned by implication with the latest survey by the Energy Institute. This was reported on about page 7 of the Melbourne Herald Sun without fanfare.
The big news is that nothing has changed despite the $$$ trillions. Fossil fuels are still 82%, the same as last year. Wind is about 3%. The balance is likely nuclear and hydro.
But coal consumption has grown by 7%! Mainly China, India and Indonesia (1.4+1.4+0.3=3Billion people) What a surprise! Indonesia and China mine most of this and consume 95% of this themselves. Indonesian exports match ours especially as our exports became so unpredictable as the Japanese government note, our AUKAUS partner. In fact global coal consumption rose to the highest level seen since 2014! So we are doing a sterling job in Australia self flagellating, spending like drunken sailors while paying for all the Chinese eco Crucifixes with Chinese coal payments. I suppose we are paying China for the transmission lines too.
It’s all quite surreal, the official posturing about saving Australia (and the planet) and the reality that actual coal consumption is soaring. And the temperature and sea level are not changing at all. I guess we have another ten years before the planet ends. Again.
And meanwhile the media report only how well it is all going and how we are not meeting our obligations and targets. Except in reality it is all a total waste of time and money and likely the greatest ecological devastation by governments in human history. Plus we are barely started with all the new lithium mines and running out of copper.
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There is a word game being played however with new energy supplies
“The share of renewables, excluding hydropower, rose to 14.42% of global power generation, an increase of roughly 11% from its share in 2021. That 2022 percentage significantly exceeded nuclear, which came in at 9% of the mix. By comparison, coal provided 35%, a slight drop from 2021, with natural gas at the aforementioned 23%.”
But as Tony points out the name plate is never reached for wind, so the % of wind is actually 30% of 14.4% or a tiny 4.3%. And the 9% growth in 100% nuclear and 35% in coal shows the way the real world is going, not the media world where reality is less than 1/3 of what you bought. You would think Consumer Affairs would have something to say about windmills, but they do not dare.
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I have noted a few articles which report that sea (not air) temperatures are going up. As if this is Global Warming. It isn’t. However it does explain why CO2 keeps going up steadily. That’s exactly what you expect with the vapour pressure of a dissolved gas as warming produces CO2 when it is now proven that CO2 does not produce (air) warming.
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Admittedly this is off topic. But an example of how largely we are fed on what journalists and editors consider important. It is so hard for most people in busy lives to have an opinion on a topic and they are howled down in practice. So they learn to say nothing and leave opinions to the Twittering classes. This is another form of self censorship, a direct consequence of being kept ignorant.
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I have a friend a cardiologist who reads the Melbourne Age. And I asked him about his leftist opinions and the articles he read. And my point was that the facts in the article often contradicted the summary headlines. His response was that he only had time for headlines. It is another way people are misinformed and kept compliant other than self censorship.
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This is human nature. Orwell didn’t foresee the future, he observed what he saw, what already existed, and wrote about it.
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Related comment:
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As for a social credit score it is a frightening idea. A conformity score set by an all powerful government. You cannot stop anyone from creating such a thing but once it is used commercially say to stop you buying petrol or catching a flight then democracy is finished. The way Trudeau stopped the bank accounts of people who donated to the truckers is a sign of his totalitarian ideas. And Canada not the USSR or China.
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And a sure fire way to stop any protest against an oppressive government. Once they have wiped out cash. Plus once everything is electric, Trudeau can freeze you to death in your own home. In a way he played his hand too soon.
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Of course you would then self censor. Increasingly there is no limit to government power.
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I exist for the lulz these days.
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A great example of censorship that goes unnoticed is wikipedia
In theory any one can edit an article to reflect their knowledge
of something. The one time I tried to edit an article my suggestion
was deleted within milliseconds. Wikipedia is VERY dystopian as
regular users think of it like Brittanica or Funk and Wagnalls on steroids.
In reality there are massive biases built into the editorial structure, which
left unrecognised amounts to a “Ministry of Truth”.
Like the one time I interacted with ChatGP and asked Joe Biden’s IQ to
be met with waffle about IQ being RaRa and not PC.
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I used to be a regular donor to Wikipedia but due to its strong Regressive bias I no longer donate.
I am also currently writing an article on the history of a certain technology and am finding quite a lot of errors and inconsistencies within and between articles.
It was wonderful for a while and looked to become a repository of all human knowledge and then the Regressives took over.
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Unfortunately, it seems likely that sites such as this one will be removed by the new Orwellian “ministry of truth” within a few years. The progressive generation (under 40s) have been well and truly brainwashed by the climate Marxists to hate our much preferred system of government and embrace the one that’s rotten to the core. The main problem is that they have no idea of what bad is, because they’ve been raised in a era where everything was easy and in a post cold war period of peace. I remember back in the 90s when I was working in western Europe just after the wall came down and talking to work colleagues that lived the experience and then driving through eastern Europe to see almost every house in a state of semi-ruin and families using manual farming techniques with pitch forks in the fields and no farm machinery in sight. These people were poor and desperate beyond belief, many with no electricity or running water. The memories from this era still haunt those that lived the experience as children, which is why countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic are not so happy about climate targets and mandates coming from their new masters. They know what’s coming and it’s beyond the imagination of most people living here. Once Marxism takes root it’s almost impossible to remove and this new censorship is a very bad sign 🙁
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It seemed strange to me that having gained their freedom for the first time in 40 years why the likes of Poland would join the EU and give away that freedom. But obviously money talks, and the EU promised lots of cash from the other member nations if they joined. The EU showers cash on other hoped for members such as Turkey by giving money to Ford to build their van factory there and close down the one in a member nation, us the UK. Or by giving 300-400 million euros to pro EU groups in Ukraine leading to their coup in 2014, and we all know how well that has gone since.
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I forgot to add – Being able to disseminate misinformation is one of the great hallmarks of a democracy. People don’t fear misinformation when all information is readily available and public debate will always flush out truth.
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In terms of the individual, I always censor myself when I talk. Especially in person. And much more than I used to. I think I have been conditioned.
If I started a youtube channel, and spoke my mind – as I speak to my wife at home alone – I would either not last long or attract attention from authority somewhere. (don’t worry I’m not a radical, I just basically think like Robert Menzies and Jack Lang did). In the UK, they will actually knock your door down at 4am for internet arguments. It’s just not worth the risk. The left are extremely litigious.
Coupled with the reality that anything I say is completely irrelevant to the whole situation anyway, that I will make zero effect on anything, one does conclude that it’s best just to go fishing.
I will remain censored drinking my Victory Gin
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Love the reference to Victory Gin. Pure George Orwell. It’s all about the Party, even with censorship.
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Will this new system allow teachers to tell students that one can identify as a cat (or a tree/giraffe/fire engine) and not be deemed ‘misinformation’?
Perhaps students will be fined under these laws for misinformation when they believe there are only 2 genders (male and female for those wondering what they are)
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In summary, despite my labored example of Ukraine, the idea of self censorship and groupthink is not new. But the repercussions of a totally connected society are new, where you cannot hide in the crowd. They will find you.
But still in China the brave comedians mock Winnie the Pooh. I am amazed at the bravery of people in a totalitarian state. And Australian and Canada and the UK are not far off oppression of the individual, where politicians can identify and persecute dissenters. And their tools are electronic media. Give $10 to support the truckers’ fair protest and you cannot heat your home or pay your mortgage. In Victoria, a pregnant woman was arrested and handcuffed in front of her children without any warrant because she had posted on Facebook. What’s the difference with Stalin and Hitler’s terror?
Trudeau has passed dangerous and is now evil. And a blunt tool of the Chinese Communists he openly admires. A minority Prime Minister like Albanese, he still dances on stage like a dictator. Self Censorship? You can if you like, but they will still find you. The internet never forgives and never forgets. No wonder people choose to say nothing.
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What did we do before the ‘Internet’ (Social Media) ? The reality is that we have all been transformed into bots who spend all their time online commenting on various sites as though anyone gives a toss what we think. What did we do before the Internet ? Down the pub with our mates, reading books, going to concerts, writing letters, phoning loved ones. Are things really better ?
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I’m just waiting for AI to take over the world. Just might be a good thing, given the nonsense that is going on.
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Ancient Tree Contains Record of Earth’s Magnetic Field Reversal in Its Rings
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My approach is to disconnect completely from the wokies. If they can’t communicate with me they can’t influence me and they can’t annoy me.
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