Search Results

Archive.org has stopped taking images of content on all platforms. For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a long swath of time since this service has chronicled the life of the Internet in real time.

We have traveled a very long way from the vision of John Perry Barlow in 1996, who imagined a cyberworld in which governments were not involved to one in which governments and their “multi stakeholder partners” are in charge of “a rules-based global digital economy.” In the course of this complete reversal, the Declaration of Internet Freedom became the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, with the word freedom consigned to little more than a passing reference.

While avoiding accountability, the UN and world leaders intend to approve a set of 3 political, non-binding documents: i) a Pact for the Future, ii) a Declaration on Future Generations, and iii) a Global Digital Compact.

The conundrum for free and open societies has always been the same: How to protect human rights and democracy from hate speech and disinformation without destroying human rights and democracy in the process. The answer embodied in the recent coordinated enactment of global censorship laws is not encouraging for the future of free and open societies.

Somehow – call me naive – I just didn’t expect the New York Times to be all-in on the immediate establishment of the surveillance state and universal censorship by the “awesome” Deep State. But think of this. If the NYT can be fully captured by this ideology, and probably captured by the money that goes with it, so can any other institution. You have probably noticed a similar editorial line being pushed by Wired, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Salon, Slate, and other venues, including the entire suite of publications owned by Conde Nast including Vogue and GQ magazine.

Knowledge of these systems provides the first step toward resistance. By understanding their development and recognizing their implementation, we can make conscious choices about our engagement. While we cannot completely escape the technocratic grid, we can maintain our humanity.

Leading corporations employing the surveillance capitalism business model include Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Surveillance capitalism has now fused with the science of psychology, marketing, and algorithmic manipulation of online information that go far beyond the predictions of Huxley and Orwell.

The person who wanted to use violence to cut the brain out of the truthspeaker was merely protecting herself against a terrible truth she could not handle. It’s the liar more than anyone who has reason to fear free speech.

What follows is the current totality of the body of evidence (available comparative studies and high-level pieces of evidence, reporting, and discussion) on COVID-19 lockdowns, masks, school closures, and mask mandates. There is no conclusive evidence supporting claims that any of these restrictive measures worked to reduce viral transmission or deaths. Lockdowns were ineffective, school closures were ineffective, mask mandates were ineffective, and masks themselves were and are ineffective and harmful.

Judge Doughty’s injunction may have flaws, but on the question of whether it advances or hinders free speech in the United States, the answer is undeniable. Missouri v. Biden is a litmus test for Americans. Either the Government has a right to curate citizens’ newsfeeds by using the power of the federal government to nationalize our information centers, or we embrace the First Amendment and unshackle ourselves from the militarized system of informational warfare that has dominated our airwaves for over three years.

People participating at the Brownstone Institute Retreat understand what is happening. It was a relief to be reminded that a wide range of committed and highly intelligent people understand the critical importance of challenging and interdicting what is being attempted. This resistance to power was a theme that ran through many of the presentations and discussions we experienced at the Retreat. I feel privileged to have been a part.

If anyone thinks this episode is mostly about ostentatiously woke drawings, or if they think Google can quickly fix the bias in its A.I. products and everything will go back to normal, they don’t understand the breadth and depth of the decade-long infowarp.

I created a Meetup group called “Covid Contrarians” in New York City. The idea was just to meet other people like me, who thought our governments were overreacting to the Covid situation. My big plan was no more than, get together and schmooze over coffee or a beer. The group lasted a few weeks before Meetup declared that it was spreading misinformation, and erased it from the website.

"I had hoped that the fires of liberty, burning within the hearts of the American public, would have been strong enough to stop this kind of tyranny from being visited upon us. I would have predicted massive pushback, but it did not happen for a good part of the year. People were mired in fear and confusion. It felt like wartime, with a population traumatized by shock and awe." ~ Jeffrey Tucker