Social Media
Elon Musk reinstates Alex Jones on X after five-year ban
From LifeSiteNews
70% of participants in an X poll voted in favor of bringing the eccentric political commentator back to the platform.
Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly Twitter.
On Sunday, December 10, Jones’ X account was reinstated after Elon Musk ran a poll in which 70% voted in favor of bringing the eccentric political commentator back to the platform.
Reinstate Alex Jones on this platform?
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2023
Musk’s decision came shortly after Tucker Carlson published an interview with Jones that garnered over 15 million views on X. In the conversation with Carlson, Jones warned about a globalist plan of “designed global collapse.” Musk has frequently watched and commented on Carlson’s show Tucker on X before.
I want to thank Tucker Carlson for the below interview. It enabled me to escape the phantom zone and let the world know what I really stand for! Tucker broke the Matrix!! https://t.co/Pee9JPuH2w
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) December 11, 2023
On Monday, X also reinstated the account of Jones’ show InfoWars, as well as Jonathan Owen Shroyer, the host of the War Room show on InfoWars.
Jones was banned from Twitter in September 2018, shortly after being de-platformed in a coordinated effort by several other big tech platforms, including his YouTube channel with around 2.5 million subscribers, due to “hate speech.”
On Sunday, Mario Nawfal hosted a live discussion (“XTownHall”) on X that featured Jones, Musk, and many other prominent figures, such as influencer Andrew Tate, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and political commentator Jack Posobiec.
The discussion, which lasted over two hours and was viewed by more than eight million users, covered a wide range of issues, including online censorship, globalism, de-population, and the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Musk and Jones agreed that there is a globalist plan to de-populate the world and that it is crucial to counter this agenda by having more children.
When asked by Jones what his plan is to counter the globalists, Musk replied: “We should expand humanity…we should have more kids, the population should increase, and we should become a multi-planet species.”
During the discussion, Jones praised Musk for standing up for free speech by acquiring Twitter and reinstating banned accounts. “You are literally changing the entire paradigm…you definitely got the system scared,” Jones told the tech billionaire.
Later in the discussion, Posobiec asked Musk what he would do if intelligence agencies like the FBI or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) approached X with censorship requests as they did in the past before Musk acquired the platform.
Musk affirmed his commitment to free speech, saying he plans to allow legal content to remain on the platform. He furthermore stated that he would be willing to go to jail if he thought a government agency was breaking the law with their censorship requests.
EXCLUSIVE: @elonmusk just confirmed to Human Events' @JackPosobiec that he would be willing to go to jail rather than illegally censor users on X on behalf of the federal government. pic.twitter.com/VDZqks37nO
— Human Events (@HumanEvents) December 10, 2023
“We will be as transparent as possible…and frankly if I think that a government agency is breaking the law in their demands on the platform, I would be prepared to go to prison personally if I think they are the ones breaking the law.”
Addressing the globalist WEF meeting in Davos, Musk said that some video clips he had seen from the events were “concerning,” and referred to the WEF as an “unelected world government.”
“I don’t think we should have an unelected, quasi-governmental organization deciding our future,” he said.
“I’m not okay with some organization that I didn’t vote for controlling my destiny or that of other people.”
“I think an unelected world government is not a good idea,” the tech mogul concluded.
Brownstone Institute
First Amendment Blues
From the Brownstone Institute
By
You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU.
I’m envious. The US has something the UK doesn’t have, namely a First Amendment. Yes I know there are those who wish the US didn’t have it either, including, I understand, John Kerry and that woman who still thinks she beat Trump the first time around. Kerry kind of wishes that the First Amendment wasn’t quite so obstructive to his plans. But from where I stand, you should be thankful for it.
Not only does the UK not have a First Amendment, it doesn’t have a constitution either, and that makes for worrying times right now. Free speech has little currency with Gen Z and the way it looks, even less with the new UK Labour government. Even Elon Musk, who takes a surprising interest in our little country, has recently declared the UK a police state.
It’s not surprising. Take for instance the case of Alison Pearson, who had the police knocking on her door this Remembrance Sunday. They had come to warn her they were investigating a tweet she had posted a whole year ago which someone had complained about. They were investigating whether it constituted a Non-Crime Hate Incident or NCHI. Yes, you heard me right, a ‘non-crime’ hate incident and no, this is not something out of Orwell, it’s straight out of the College of Policing’s playbook.
If you haven’t heard of them, you can thank your First Amendment. In the UK you can get a police record for something you posted on X that someone else didn’t like and you haven’t even committed a crime. NCHIs are a way they have of getting around the law in the same way John Kerry would like to get around the First Amendment, except it’s real where I live.
Alison Pearson is a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, but that doesn’t mean she can write what she likes. When she asked the police what the tweet was which was objected to, she was told they couldn’t tell her that. When she asked who the complainant was, they said they couldn’t tell her that either. They added, that she shouldn’t call them a complainant, they were officially the victim. That’s what due process is like when you don’t have a First Amendment or a constitution. Victims of NCHI in the UK are decided without a trial or a defense. They asked, very politely, if Pearson would like to come voluntarily to the police station for a friendly interview. If she didn’t want to come voluntarily, they would put her on a wanted list and she would eventually be arrested. Nice choice.
It’s true that there has been a public ruckus over this particular case, but the police are unapologetic and have doubled down. Stung into action by unwanted publicity, they are now saying they have raised the matter from an NCHI to an actual crime investigation. Which means they think she can be arrested and put in prison for expressing her opinion on X. And of course they are right. In the UK that’s where we are right now. Pearson tried to point out the irony of two police officers turning up on her door to complain about her free speech on Remembrance Day of all days, when we recall the thousands who died to keep this a free country, but irony is lost on those who have no memory of what totalitarianism means.
The way things are looking I would say things can only get worse. The new Labour government has made it clear that it wants to beef up the reporting of NCHIs and make them an effective tool for clamping down on hurtful speech. You might think these are quite rare but not a bit of it; 13,200 of these were recorded in the last 12 months, and that’s around 36 a day, and they go on your record and sometimes mean you end up with no job. They also have new laws planned to control misinformation and disinformation, something not just confined to the UK. Similar laws are planned for Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the EU. Germany in particular is keen to remove all misinformation from the internet, I understand.
Whenever I see the word ‘misinformation’ these days I automatically translate it in my head to what it really means, which is ‘dissent.’ Western countries, former champions of free speech, the bedrock of liberty and individual choice, en masse it seems, now want to outlaw dissent. What is coordinating this attack on free expression, I don’t know, but it’s real and it’s upon us. We are slowly being intellectually suffocated into not expressing any opinion that others might find objectionable or that might contradict what the government said. If you had told me that would happen in my lifetime, I would have called you a liar.
I live in the UK, the home of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta, and the mother of parliamentary democracy. I was proud that we produced men like John Milton, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Paine, that we understood the importance of the Areopagitica, the Rights of Man, and incorporated On Liberty into our social thinking. But those days seem long gone when police knock on your door to arrest you for an X post.
So I’m glad someone somewhere has a First Amendment even if we don’t. It may be your last defense in that republic of yours, if you can keep it.
Internet
Canadaās Censorship Crusade Targets Tech Giants in a Push for “Disinformation” Control
A flurry of controversial bills in Canada, some of which became law, serve to cement this impression.
Now, as President Trump prepares to start his second term in office in the US, Canada’s “orphaned” ruling class continues with the “disinformation” narrative – either as a sign of long-term commitment or looking for new “disinformation partners” elsewhere in the world – or simply as a sign of inertia.
Time will tell, and it will be interesting to see, but for the moment, news out of Canada speaks about a report compiled by the House of Commons Heritage Committee, titled, “Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.”
How about the tactics deployed in Canada – and globally – using all manner of intimidation and subversion to evade citizens’ right to free speech?
Maybe another day, by another ruling coalition.
Right now, the Liberals, the New Democratic Party, and Bloc Québécois stand behind statements such as this one, found in the cumbersomely-named report:
“The Government of Canada notes some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money.”
This looks like a call to combine (yet more) censorship with (yet more) deplatforming. And the ones to “fix” things for Canada’s current government are companies behind major social platforms, like Meta and Google.
But the group of Canada’s MPs behind the report believes so.
They want mechanisms put in place “to detect undesirable or questionable content that may be the product of disinformation or foreign interference and that these platforms be required to promptly identify such content and report it to users.”
Does Canadian parliament’s pressure on US tech companies not count as “foreign interference”? Unclear. Another thing that’s unclear – as in, undefined in the report – is what its authors have in mind when they mention “disinformation” and, “conspiracy theories.”
It’s as if these terms have become “art for art’s sake.”
Whatever that may be, Canada’s ruling parliamentarians want specific actions against these undefined phenomena to be enforced by tech companies.
“Failure to do so should result in penalties,” reads the document.
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