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Censorship Industrial Complex

Australia’s Misinformation Bill Is Dead…for Now

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From the Brownstone Institute

By  Maryanne Demasi 

The Australian government’s attempt to ram through legislation to combat misinformation online has been blocked after the Greens party announced it would not support the controversial bill.

“We are concerned this bill doesn’t actually do what it needs to do when it comes to stopping the deliberate mass distribution of false and harmful information,” said Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

This unexpected move is said to be the final nail in the coffin for the bill that intended to grant the media watchdog unprecedented regulatory powers to oversee digital content and determine what is ‘misinformation.’

A Domino Effect

During this week, an interesting display of parliamentary dynamics unfolded as an array of Senators announced they would oppose the bill, one by one.

Senators Lidia Thorpe, Tammy Tyrell, David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, Gerard Rennick, Fatima Payman, and others declared their opposition.

Their reasons varied from concerns over government overreach, and vague definitions of misinformation, to the implications for political discourse and the potential for misuse. Each statement chipped away at the bill’s support, creating a domino effect.

An urgent call to action resulted in significant public outcry. Australians, concerned about their digital rights, flooded senators with emails, petitions, and social media campaigns.

The sheer volume of these communications likely played a crucial role in shaping the Senators’ views.

The vigorous debate also garnered international attention.

Michael Shellenberger, an American author and free speech campaigner, visited Australia to warn that these “totalitarian” laws would have implications for democracy, and blur the line between regulating harmful content and stifling dissent.

Nov 20, 2024 – Michael Shellenberger on Sky News Australia

According to Shellenberger, misinformation should be countered with more and better information, not through suppression or censorship.

Elon Musk, whose influence in the digital sphere is undeniable, especially after taking the helm of X, expressed similar views, and has been vocal about his disdain for what he perceives as “overreach” in digital governance, labelling the failed bill as “fascist.”

Digital ID for Under 16s

It has not quelled the government’s enthusiasm for its proposed ban of social media access for individuals under 16. This bill, which introduces a mandatory age verification process, has implications for digital identity and privacy.

The rapid legislative push on Thursday only allowed a 24-hour window for public submissions, a move to fast-track the controversial legislation without due public scrutiny.

The bill would require all Australians to undergo identity verification to use social media, raising alarms about the collection and potential misuse of personal data. The process could involve gathering biometric data, posing a risk for data breaches or misuse.

Today, Musk described the legislation as a “backdoor way to control access to the internet,” which promises to punish platforms, including X, with steep fines if they allow children under age 16 to hold social media accounts.

The combination of these legislative proposals (the misinformation bill, and the digital ID for under-16s), paints a picture of a government intent on tightening control over what you can say and read online.

What Happens Now?

After this week’s news, the Labor government must now retreat and reassess.

It could decide to abandon the legislative approach altogether and focus on other means like public education campaigns or working with social media platforms on voluntary codes of practice. But this is unlikely.

The government will most probably go back to the drawing board, either to revise the bill with more stringent protections for free speech or to explore alternative, less direct methods of addressing misinformation, hoping to revive the bill in the new year.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

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Trump’s dismantling of USAID is his biggest blow against the Deep State yet

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From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Elon Musk’s DOGE has shut down USAID, immediately ceasing U.S. government funding of NGOs backing digital tyranny, mass migration, the ‘LGBTQ’ agenda, abortion – and a host of ‘regime change’ operations.

Donald Trump’s new administration has begun to dismantle globalist network funding of the policies of social revolution across the West – and beyond. With the revelations on the shuttering of USAID, Americans now know whose money is behind the Deep State: theirs. 

Trump’s war on the Deep State has shocked the establishment. Elon Musk’s DOGE has shut down  USAID, immediately ceasing U.S. government funding of NGOs backing digital tyranny, mass migration, the “LGBTQ” agenda, abortion – and a host of “regime change” operations including the funding of the origins of COVID-19 and the impeachment of Donald Trump himself.  

These projects, and many more, were all paid for with U.S. taxpayer’s money through USAID. 

This Deep State network of finance, influence and the subversion of democracy in the U.S., Britain, Europe and beyond remained unchanged in every election – until this one.  

USAID, The U.S. Agency for International Development, “disbursed over 72 billion dollars last year,” according to a Newsweek report in October 2024, which described the now-defunct agency as “by far the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid.” 

So where is this “aid” going? 

 

… and what sort of “humanitarian” projects has it been aiding? 

“USAID is notorious for funding the most horrifying projects known to mankind,” as Mike Benz explains.   

USAID’s “humanitarian” work included funding and directing the template for global digital governance in Ukraine, with its DIIA app, and funding the World Economic Forum which promotes the same agenda:  

Its humanitarian efforts extended to sponsoring anti-Catholic propaganda in Ireland: 

 

As Glenn Beck has pointed out, USAID was a major sponsor of abortion:  

Here is a picture of ISIS terrorists in Syria in a USAID tent:

USAID was also funding “globalist propaganda” on the U.K.’s state broadcaster:

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger reported, “From 2004-2022, USAID was the largest U.S. government funder of EcoHealth Alliance, the group that funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which likely started the COVID pandemic.” 

 

USAID sought to undermine and overthrow traditional and conservative national governments in Eastern Europe – and replace them with liberal-globalist ones:  

 

Dmitry Arestovich, the former right-hand man to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, now says USAID pressured the Ukrainian President into the war: 

 

USAID funded “sterilization projects” in Peru: 

 

And as LifeSiteNews reported in December 2024, USAID pressured African nations to change pro-life laws and promote mass abortions, but that did not stop Fr. James Martin from bewailing its demise. 

 

USAID also paid “race rioters” to engage in violent protests in Africa: 

 

At home, USAID sponsored the prosecution of U.S. citizens by “Soros-funded prosecutors”:

 

…and, as former Trump State Department staffer Mike Benz also asks, “Why did USAID pay $20 million to hit piece journalists to dig up dirt on Rudy Giuliani and use that dirt as the basis to impeach the sitting U.S. President in 2019?” 

 

USAID was also giving “millions of dollars to Bill Kristol,” arch-neocon and founder of the permanent war “Project for a New American Century.”

 

The populist leader of El Salvador Nayib Bukele summed up the happy ending for the world that is the end of USAID.  

“Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.” 

He explained how only “maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need,” adding that “there are such cases” – but the remaining ninety percent, he says, “It is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda. Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.” 

Donald Trump’s war on the Deep State has just begun. It is not merely concerned with saving America, but his “common sense revolution” is a cure for a world made sick by a global network of death, deception and digital tyranny. He is uprooting the hidden international system which has promoted “LGBT, open borders and war” – as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán defined the values of the former regime. 

This has been described as a “counter-revolution” by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who says these are serious moves against the “Deep State… and its mirror image, the Deep Church.”

With a serious campaign underway to destroy the business model of the globalist system it is hard to see how the rainbow “church” of Fr. James Martin can survive its isolation in a world without the patronage, propaganda and power of a corrupt Deep State and its globalist networks. 

And the revolution does not stop with USAID. With moves to “purge” the FBI, audit the U.S. Treasury and all the agencies of the U.S. government, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is set to undertake a thorough cleanup of the White House and all it commands.  

You might say the swamp is being drained. 

However you frame it, what is happening here has never been seen in our lifetimes.  

The secret state which directed politics and policy in the West despite elections is being exposed, defunded and shut down. We may not only have meaningful elections in future, but a Western society free of the propaganda of social revolution whose toxic “new values” had one thing in mind: the replacement of Christian civilization with a global government no one could ever escape.  

Finally, after decades of destruction by design, things have really changed. For good. 

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Trump’s Executive Orders Are Taking Massive Chunk Out Of Censorship State

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Roderick Law

President Donald Trump has hit the ground running, issuing a flurry of executive orders. Two of them are particularly welcome.

The first, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” mandates agencies across the government cease funding and end any activities that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” The other, “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” requires agencies “to identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the weaponization of the Intelligence Community.”

Each order is necessary, and their issuance so soon after the inauguration shows that Trump understands that censorship and “lawfare” were rampant under his predecessor.

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Former President Joe Biden himself (or whoever gave him words to read) gave us a stark reminder of his comfort with censorship in his farewell address, when he warned of the “potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country.”

But Biden was referring to the rise of social media that do not enforce speech codes dictated by one side of the political divide. He went on to complain that we are getting “buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation,” while “[s]ocial media is giving up fact-checking.”

It’s true: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg saw the election results and realized public toleration for censorship has reached its limit. He is dismantling Facebook’s “fact checking” apparatus and following X’s “community notes” model.

Worse, Zuckerburg is telling tales out of school, recalling how during the pandemic Biden officials would “scream” and “curse” at Facebook employees to remove posts that countered the government line. Tech-industrial complexes are dangerous things if you do not control them.

We can’t forget that government censorship, and its support for research into censorship technologies, is broad and deep. Consider the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The committee was composed of academics and tech company officials working very closely with government personnel. The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) discovered they also worked with left-wing activists. The committee was created ostensibly in response to misinformation campaigns from foreign actors, but it evolved toward domestic “threats.” It had a “Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information” subcommittee. “Mal-information” is info that is true, but contrary to the preferred narratives of the censor. Trump’s order directly calls such efforts a “guise” to censor speech “in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.” Unfortunately, the committee was the tip of the iceberg. The Pentagon and the State Department had their own ties to censorship initiatives.

The same impulse that fostered censorship weaponized Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice(DOJ). Ask pro-life activists facing prison sentences for peaceful demonstrations outside abortion clinics.

Going back further, talk to parents who, FGI discovered, were called racist and transphobic by teachers unions and the Biden Education Department. Or the concerned parents who dared to speak up in school board meetings around the country. Their reward was being called a threat and singled out by the DOJ and FBI. We can be thankful to whoever it was that leaked the FBI memo recommending infiltrating Catholic Mass enthusiast cells.

Trump’s executive order on weaponization will hopefully right some of these wrongs and remind the DOJ and intelligence services that they work for the people. (The president also stripped security clearances from the 51 former intelligence officials who, without evidence, dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “Russian information operation.”) If nothing else, it will make clear to all, no matter their party, that there are no grey areas and no workarounds when it comes to fundamental constitutional rights.

The federal government has strayed far from its purpose of securing the God-given rights of its citizens. Trump received a mandate from the voters to move it back to the true path, and these orders bring vital reforms. Ideally, Congress will follow suit and pass legislation doing the same, but permanently. As Americans, it is the least we should expect from our government.

Roderick Law is the communications director for the Functional Government Initiative.

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