90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, September 25, 2023

Visage à trois #1726

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Buried behind the Brand-related headlines yesterday, the British House of Lords voted to pass the controversial “Online Safety Bill” into law. All that’s needed now is Royal assent, which Charles will obviously provide.

The bill’s (very catchy) long-form title is…
A Bill to make provision for and in connection with the regulation by OFCOM of certain internet services; for and in connection with communications offences; and for connected purposes.
…and that’s essentially it, it hands the duty of “regulating” certain online content to the UK’s Office of Communications (OfCom).

Ofcom Chief Executive Dame Melanie Dawes could barely contain her excitement in a statement to the press:

“Today is a major milestone in the mission to create a safer life online for children and adults in the UK. Everyone at Ofcom feels privileged to be entrusted with this important role, and we’re ready to start implementing these new laws.”

As always with these things, the bill’s text is a challenging and rather dull read, deliberately obscure in its language and difficult to navigate.

Of some note is the “information offenses” clause, which empowers OfCom to demand “information” from users, companies and employees, and makes it a crime to withhold it. The nature of this “information” is never specified, nor does it appear to be qualified. Meaning it could be anything, and will most likely be used to get private account information about users from social media platforms.

In one of the more worrying clauses, the Bill outlines what they call “communications offenses”. Section 10 details crimes of transmitting “Harmful, false and threatening communications”.

It should be noted that sending threats is already illegal in the UK, so the only new ground covered here is “harmful” and/or “false” information, and the fact they feel the need to differentiate between those two things should worry you.

After all, the truth can definitely be “harmful”…Especially to a power-hungry elite barely controlling an angry populace through dishonest propaganda.

Rather amusingly, the bill makes it a crime to “send a message” containing false information in clause 156…then immediately grants immunity to every newspaper, television channel and streaming service in clause 157.

Apparently it’s OK for the mainstream media to be harmful and dishonest.

But the primary purpose of the new law is a transfer of responsibility to enable and incentivize censorship.

Search engines (“regulated search services”, to quote the bill) and social media companies (“regulated user-to-user services”) will now be held accountable for how people use their platform.

For example: If I were to google “Is it safe to drink bleach?”, find some website that says yes, and then drink bleach, OfCom would not hold me responsible. They would hold Google responsible for letting me read that website. Likewise, if someone tweets @ me telling me to drink bleach, and I do so, Twitter would be held responsible for permitting that communication to take place.

This could result in hefty fines, or even potentially criminal charges, to companies and/or executives of those companies. It could even open them up to massively expensive civil suits (don’t be surprised if such a legal drama hits the headlines soon).

Unsurprisingly the mainstream coverage of the new laws barely mentions any of these concerns, instead opting to put child pornography front and centre. Because the Mrs Lovejoy argument always works.

That’s all window dressing, of course, what this is really about is “misinformation” and “hate speech”. Which is to say, fact-checking mainstream lies and calling out mainstream...

Visage à trois #1725

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1346

Visage à trois #1724

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #1346

Report: Three Cases of ‘Highly Contagious Tuberculosis’ Found Among Migrants Amid Record-Breaking Surge

There are three confirmed cases of tuberculosis among illegal immigrants in the El Paso sector of the Texas border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources. Fox News reported Friday that the cases are “further complicating the already daunting task” of handling the record-shattering number of migrants arriving daily.

“I can’t overstate how difficult that makes it to mitigate these numbers when you have three cases of highly contagious tuberculosis among the migrants,” Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins reported. “You have the space, the capacity for migrants already overflowing … they have to bus them to other sectors, but you can’t when you have to mitigate and isolate and contact-trace migrants with tuberculosis,” the reporter explained.

Independent journalist Michael Yon has been reporting for months that the illegal aliens are carrying deadly diseases with them.

From the Darien Gap, last May, Yon reported that he was “surrounded” by migrants with “malaria, dengue, and tuberculosis” and warned those diseases are “being imported to United States and Canada EVERY DAY.”

The Darien Gap is a dense tropical jungle that separates Colombia and Panama and has become a major migrant route to the United States.

“Dengue is called Break Bone Fever—because when you get dengue, it feels like every bone in your body is broken. Including your eyes in your head,” Yon added. “Tuberculosis is one of the deadliest diseases in human history. Malaria…is coming your way.”

Yon reported on Thursday that many of of the migrants passing through the Darien Gap are sick and several of the reporters who have been reporting from the scene have gotten sick repeatedly.

“Something’s going wrong,” Yon said, noting that he was presently suffering from a low-grade infection of some sort. “Many of these aliens are fighting each other—even killing each other and raping each other,” he added. “We don’t know who they are.” Yon called the situation a “total wartime invasion.”

More than 2 million….come down here to Darien Gap with us, @elonmusk https://t.co/VMWLRBXoXh pic.twitter.com/EFEeWCg1VN
— Michael Yon: Callsign BIG HONEY 6 (@Michael_Yon) September 21, 2023

Further East, the small border town of Eagle Pass, Texas (population 28,000) has been besieged by a massive influx of around 11,500 migrants in the last 10 days. In an interview with CNN Thursday, Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas blamed Joe Biden and said he has had no communication from the White House amid the overwhelming influx.

Salinas said that he declared a state of emergency after 5,000 migrants crossed over the border into the city from Piedras Negras, Mexico, and said the Biden administration has done nothing to help.

“I believe 100 percent [Biden] does, he bears some responsibility for this crisis. I haven’t heard from anybody in the administration. The president hasn’t put out a statement, the vice president, I haven’t heard from anybody,” Salinas said.

“We’re here abandoned. We’re on the border, we’re asking for help. This is...