The Elites are Increasingly Saying What They Are Thinking.

They are increasingly saying the quiet part out loud. The problem is that too many Americans want to think for themselves and they think that they are in some sort of democracy. And then there is that damned First Amendment that keeps us elites from controlling all the information.

I fear that they are brashly saying these things because they are confident that they are about to take down X (Twitter), which would mean they actually would control essentially all national dialogue.

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X in the Crosshairs in Brazil (With the Censorship Encouraged by the United States)

Glenn Greenwald on System Update Sept 24, 2024, #340:

[I]n Brazil, that country's authoritarian Supreme Court justice ordered X banished from the entire country as a result of Musk's refusal to censor the long list of accounts that the judge ordered banned, a list that included members of Brazil's Congress who were democratically elected by the country's population, including some with the highest vote totals of anyone in the country. With the stroke of a pen, this judge ordered X and other platforms to censor those people. Yet, over the last week, X has begun taking all the required steps to regain entry in Brazil to once again be allowed to be in Brazil, including banning all of those accounts that the judge ordered banished, as well as pledging future obedience to all forthcoming judicial orders.

All of this raises some valid questions about state sovereignty, just like the U.S. decision to ban or force the sale of TikTok does, but more so, it illustrates the rapidly escalating regime of censorship being imposed for real on online speech, expression, activism and journalism and the increasingly severe weapons being used by these states to ensure that that control continues to be consolidated in their hands.

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George Carlin Bit on Assassination, Etc.

I don't think of Donald Trump as a big advocate for peace and harmony, but he has spoken out against U.S. warmongering far more than Kamala Harris, who now has the endorsements of Dick Cheney and his minions.  If you are a candidate who speaks out against U.S. warmongering, you are threatening the  jobs of the U.S. military and U.S. security state employees. It also appears that you are risking your own life.

Assassination. You know what's interesting about assassination? Well, not only does it change those popularity polls in a big fucking hurry, but it's also interesting to notice who it is we assassinate. You ever notice who it is? Stop to think of who it is we kill. It's always people who've told us to live together in harmony and try to love one another. Jesus Gandhi, Lincoln, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin, Luther King, Medgar Evers Malcolm X John Lennon, they all said, try to live together peacefully. Bam, right in the fucking head. Apparently, we're not ready for that. Yeah, that's difficult behavior for us.

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The Silence of the White House While Speech is Being Muzzled World Wide

The silence of the White House is Deafening, too horrible for most Americans to contemplate even though it deeply affects every American.

David Sachs:

"American politicians speak constantly about the indispensable role of the United States in leading the free world against authoritarianism. If that is true, why is the White House so silent in the face of new global threats to free speech? In January, American citizen Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison for posting YouTube videos; the State Department didn’t lift a finger to help. Last week, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France for the crime of insufficient content moderation. Now Brazil has banned X for resisting the diktats of a tyrannical judge, who salivates over the possibility of jailing @elonmusk.

The EU is one step behind, with Eurocrat Thierry Breton pursuing a criminal investigation against Elon for “platforming disinformation,” which Breton defines to include a conversation with Donald Trump.

In the UK, the government of Keir Starmer imprisons critics of open borders with more zeal than it prosecutes violent crime. In Canada, Justin Trudeau crushed a trucker protest against vaccine mandates by asserting sweeping new powers to freeze bank accounts.

At no point has the White House expressed concern about this new iron curtain that seems to be descending across the West. Quite the contrary, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly pressured Meta to censor during Covid. Worse, the FBI primed Facebook to censor true stories about Biden Family corruption by suggesting that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation (even though the FBI knew it was authentic).

Barring court intervention, TikTok will shut down in the U.S. on January 19, 2025 thanks to a new power authorized by Congress to ban websites and applications that the President determines are subject to the influence of a foreign adversary. X may not be far behind if liberal elites and deep state apparatchiks like Robert Reich and Alexander Vindman get their wish. They have called for the U.S. to adopt Brazil’s and the EU’s approach and “rein in” Elon Musk.

Hypocritically, the same voices demanding this crackdown are also the loudest in proclaiming the West to be engaged in a “war on authoritarianism” against countries like Russia and China. But whatever their other sins, Russia and China are in no position to deprive American citizens of their free speech rights; only our own government can do that.

Similarly, if Western leaders truly wanted to prevent authoritarianism, the easiest place to start would be at home, protecting the civil liberties of their own citizens. Instead they seem obsessed with deflecting the public’s attention onto foreign enemies, as Orwell depicted in the Two Minutes Hate in 1984.

As this battle over free speech heats up in an election year, where do the candidates stand? Donald Trump has declared his support for free speech whereas Kamala Harris has said nothing and can be expected to continue her administration’s policy of tacit approval of creeping censorship. In just two months, Americans will decide. Do we actually lead the free world in standing up for free speech, or do we accept the authoritarianism we claim to detest so much?"

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The Desperate Situation in London

London is unrecognizable. This is the desperate situation in the UK. According to Konstantin Kisin, the widespread riots are merely a symptom of much bigger challenges in the UK. The government's main tactic to "address this situation" is mass censorship and attempts to shut down Twitter ("X").

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