The woke world is a world of snitches, informants, rats. Go to any space concerned with social justice and what will you find? Endless surveillance. Everybody is to be judged. Everyone is under suspicion. Everything you say is to be scoured, picked over, analyzed for any possible offense. Everyone’s a detective in the Division of Problematics, and they walk the beat 24/7. You search and search for someone Bad doing Bad Things, finding ways to indict writers and artists and ordinary people for something, anything. That movie that got popular? Give me a few hours and 800 words. I’ll get you your indictments. That’s what liberalism is, now — the search for baddies doing bad things, like little offense archaeologists, digging deeper and deeper to find out who’s Good and who’s Bad. I wonder why people run away from establishment progressivism in droves.
I read about the PWR BTTM accusations. They’re disturbing. I take them seriously. But these guys have had their careers erased overnight, and the idea that we have any responsibility to give them the chance to defend themselves is treated like you took part in their alleged crimes. You simply cannot say, in polite society, “basic fairness requires us to avoid a rush to judgment and to give people the right to respond to accusations”. To do so gets you lumped in with the criminals. Like a friend of mine said, “the only acceptable reaction to an accusation is enthusiastic and unqualified acceptance”. I don’t know how people can simultaneously talk about prison abolition and restoring the idea of forgiveness to literal criminal justice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kangaroo court system. Like I wrote once, we can’t simultaneously be a movement based on rehabilitation and restorative justice AND a viciously judgmental moral aristocracy. You know who thinks everybody’s guilty until proven innocent? Cops. You know who thinks people don’t deserve the right to defend themselves? Cops. You know who says those who defend basic fairness and due process are as bad as criminals themselves? Cops.
Freddie deBoer, “Planet of Cops”, reposted by Jesse Singal, originally published 2017-05-17.
August 18, 2023
February 17, 2023
Spy ballooning has a remarkably long history (that’s clearly still ongoing)
In The Line, Scott Van Wynsberghe outlines the history of balloons in wartime and (as many are now aware from recent events) in peacetime:
China’s balloon spying is shocking on so many levels that you can take your pick. There is the ultra-flagrant violation of foreign sovereignty, the stunningly surreal air of denial exhibited by Beijing, and the fearful sense that something in the world order just lurched. There is also puzzlement: what, balloon spying is still a thing? Indeed it is, and its centuries-long history is instructive as to what China is now doing. It also makes clear that the U.S. is no innocent victim here but rather a past offender with a cleaned-up act.
Among the first major studies of aerial reconnaissance was a book brought out by military author Glenn B. Infield way back in 1970. In a way, Infield was charting unknown territory. When he addressed balloons in particular, he traced their use in spying to the many wars associated with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. In 1794, he related, the French military officer Jean-Marie-Joseph Countelle made an ascent at the city of Maubeuge in order to monitor enemy forces in the area. In the process, Countelle became the first balloon spy.
As technology improved, other firsts followed. By the 1850s, cameras were mounted on French military balloons. In the 1860s, during the American Civil War, Union forces battling the Confederacy used balloons trailing telegraphic wires, which transmitted immediate updates from the balloonists. Yet technology cut both ways. By the early 1900s, balloons had a nemesis in sight, in the form of winged and powered aircraft.
The inevitable showdown occurred in the First World War, and it was ugly. Large numbers of observation balloons were used by all sides in the conflict, and WWI historian Denis Winter claims the Germans alone deployed 170 of them in France by 1917. Typically, such balloons were tethered in place near the frontline, floating at several thousand feet, with telephone wires dangling to the ground. Although they seemed vulnerable, they were actually protected from below by anti-aircraft units, which blasted at any enemy plane that got too close. However, the reverse was also true, with balloons themselves being fired at from the ground. By 1915, says aviation writer Ralph Barker, the British were losing at least a dozen balloons a month from all forms of enemy action. Those balloonists who were not shot to pieces often had to bail out, putting their faith in parachutes that did not always work. (Horrified onlookers called them “balloonatics.”) The fighter pilots responsible for much of this mayhem — which they called “balloon-busting” — may not have had an easy time, but some of them scored heavily, with one Frenchman named Coiffard tallying 28 balloons. Although observation balloons managed to make it to the end of the war, it was a near-run thing. According to author Linda Hervieux, nobody after the war was talking about repeating that experience in any future fighting.
[…]
Once the Second World War was underway, some propaganda leafleting did occur, but secret balloon activity seemed to be at a low level. That was very misleading, because one of the tensest moments in ballooning history was playing out in the background, but it occurred amid so much security that the entire tale took years to emerge. In 1944, Japan launched the first of over 9,000 bomb-rigged balloons across the Pacific. Robert C. Mikesh, in a comprehensive 1973 monograph issued by the Smithsonian Institution, noted that almost a thousand of the balloons may have reached North America, but the true number is unknowable, because so many came down in remote wilderness. (One was found by forestry workers in British Columbia as late as 2014.) Mikesh tabulated 285 known incidents, ranging from Alaska all the way south to Baja California and as far inland as Manitoba. Both the U.S. and Canada clamped down hard on any news about the balloons, for fear of providing Tokyo valuable feedback about the results of the campaign. (In other words, balloon counterintelligence became a priority.) In general, the balloons did not cause a lot of harm, but one of them slaughtered six people in Oregon in 1945. By a strange fluke, one of the few groups in the U.S. that knew the full story of the balloons was an element of the Black community. The all-Black 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion was sent to the U.S. West to handle emergencies caused by the balloons.
The remains of a Japanese balloon bomb found in the Monashee Mountains near Lumby, BC in 2014. It was detonated on-site by the bomb disposal unit of Maritime Forces Pacific of the Royal Canadian Navy.
There is a strong temptation to blame the Japanese balloon bombs for what happened next, because the U.S. unaccountably entered the Cold War as the most pugnacious exponent of clandestine ballooning up to that time. Whatever the explanation, the epic struggle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics plunged U.S. ballooning into a tangle of psychological warfare, shadowy science, under-the-table finances, and clandestine belligerence indistinguishable from military attacks. Plus, UFOs and breakfast foods were involved (seriously).
February 14, 2023
Are you not a PATRIOT? Do you hate FREEDOM?
I sometimes wonder if any bill ever gets passed in the United States without a catchy acronym anymore. Rob Henderson notes the anti-patriotic PATRIOT act and the anti-freedom FREEDOM act as examples of bills named in a way to almost exactly invert the true purpose of the legislation:
Many fully-grown adults have never developed the ability to think beyond words. Others are keenly aware of how easily people fall for this language game. And tactically exploit this mental weakness.
This isn’t a new phenomenon. William Shirer, the American journalist and author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, described his experiences as a war correspondent in Nazi Germany:
The strangest variant of this way of thinking is the belief that just because a word or a term sounds good, the reality behind it is also unquestionably good.
In October of 2001, the Bush Administration famously decided to expand state surveillance. This allowed federal agencies to monitor domestic telephone conversations, online activity, email, and financial records, among other intrusions, without a court order.
And what did they call this decision? The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.
USA PATRIOT Act.
Better known as the PATRIOT Act. And if you were against it, what did supporters say that your criticisms implied?
In June of 2015, the PATRIOT Act expired. The Obama Administration then restored most of the provisions under the title Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act.
USA FREEDOM.
Better known as the FREEDOM Act. And if you were against it, what did supporters say that your criticisms implied?
There’s a country in which the first three names are “Democratic”, “People’s”, and “Republic”. The first and third words essentially mean the same as the middle — this state belongs to the people, and represents them.
In the modern era, government legitimacy is derived from this concept — representation of the people.
So the name of this particular country basically begins: “Legitimate Legitimate Legitimate”. Officially it known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Sounds like a lovely place. It’s more commonly known as North Korea.
The Soviet Union was officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
China today is officially known as the “People’s Republic of China”.
Who could be against entities with names containing words like Republic, Democratic, People’s, and Union? They sound so nice. Even socialist is cleverly named — who could be against anything with the word “social” in it?
There’s a violent organization that calls themselves Antifa. Short for antifascist.
There are people who will say with a straight face that if you criticize Antifa, then you are a fascist. Or they will imply that you harbor fascist sympathies.
Interestingly, as William Shirer notes in the book referenced above, Antifa collaborated with the Nazis to help elect Adolf Hitler. Antifa has its origins in Germany, and, as a communist organization, their primary goal was to accelerate the forces of history. Antifa in the 1930s aimed to bring forth the revolution. They partnered with the Nazis to overthrow the Social Democrats who controlled the Weimar Republic. Antifa supporters believed that a fascist regime was a necessary step to end capitalism and usher in a communist utopia.
During this period, fascist was used as an epithet against capitalist society and anyone opposed to communism. They used this term to describe the center-left party in control of the Weimar Republic. As Stalin put it, “Fascism and social democracy are twin brothers, social democracy is only a wing of fascism.”
February 13, 2023
It’s open season for balloons over North America
In The Line, yet another incursion into NORAD air space, and no, this isn’t a re-post from last week:
Holy jumpin’ Jeepers, folks, we’ve got more balloons!
On Friday, the Americans shot down another unidentified flying object — gulp — off the coast of Alaska. By Saturday, NORAD was reporting yet another one, this time over Canadian territory. NORAD jets scrambled, and an American F-22 destroyed the object over Yukon. Canadian military teams are now en route to recover the wreck and find out what the hell we are shooting at.
This was an exciting enough little pick-me-up on Saturday, but it wasn’t done. Later that night, another air defence emergency was declared over Montana, and American F-15 jets were scrambled out of Oregon to intercept an object that had been detected on radar. They were not able to find anything, and as of press time, NORAD has said only that they will continue to monitor the situation.
A few points we’d make about a truly bizarre series of stories.
The first is that there’s nothing wrong or particularly embarrassing about an American plane defending Canadian air space. NORAD is a joint bi-national command. Missions are tasked to the first available aircraft. That might sometimes mean a Canadian jet defending U.S. territory. It’s happened! On Saturday, the object was closer to American bases in Alaska than the nearest CF-18 base in Alberta. There probably is a conversation worth having about whether Canada should maintain a small alert force of jets further north, better able to respond in the future. That’s expensive and logistically complicated, but may still be worth considering. For now, the system functioned as intended. So we say, quite sincerely, thanks, America. We appreciate the help.
That being said, we do think this is a useful reminder that the long and repeated delays by Canada to both replace the aging CF-18 jets and modernize NORAD with new sensors and capabilities were reckless and dumb. It was obvious that the CF-18s needed replacing when Stephen Harper took office, but we only got that underway in recent months. NORAD, for its part, functions well as an institution but needs upgraded technology. That project also should have begun many years ago. In both cases, we delayed because we didn’t want to spend the money and because defence projects in this country are almost always politically fraught. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and now the weird series of aerial intruders is a useful reminder that neglecting your own defences is never a good idea. We are realists about Canada’s ability to field a massive military, but our geography, in so many ways a blessing, does impose a few costs back on us. It’s not easy to patrol and police such massive territories, especially with a relatively small and concentrated population. But we have to do it. It’s what being a country means. Too often, we haven’t. We hope that changes. With the NORAD modernization announced and the F-35s ordered, perhaps we’re finally making right some of these failures. We hope so. But we are jaded, friends. We admit that.
Our final point is an appeal to calm. We don’t really know what the hell is happening with all these aerial intruders either, but there could easily be a pretty mundane explanation. Radar sets have programmable software filters that are intended to avoid cluttering up the scopes with too much information. Without these filters, clouds, snow storms and birds can cause returns that may look like planes and missiles. One way of filtering out such clutter is by establishing a minimum speed for flagging an object. Balloons are likely normally below that minimum. Your Line editors suspect that part of what is happening right now is that we’ve adjusted those filters, and are suddenly seeing things that were already there all along.
Is that better, or worse? We don’t know. We can make that argument either way. In any case, that may be what’s happening.
Or hell, maybe it’s aliens, and Canada and the U.S. just declared war on a more sophisticated race that travelled across the vastness of the stars only to end their journey by being murdered by Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden. We doubt it, to be honest. But it’s been a weird few years already, no?
December 31, 2022
The Twitter Files – “Let’s at least try to stop lying for a while, see what happens. How bad can it be?”
Matt Taibbi on the continuing revelations about Twitter’s deep entanglements with agencies of the US (and probably many other) government:
In the coming days you’ll find a new thread on Twitter, along with a two-part article here at TK explaining the latest #TwitterFiles findings. Even as someone in the middle of it, naturally jazzed by everything I’m reading, I feel the necessity of explaining why it’s important to keep hammering at this.
Any lawyer who’s ever sifted though a large discovery file will report the task is like archaeology. You dig a little, find a bit of a claw, dust some more and find a tooth, then hours later it’s the outline of a pelvis bone, and so on. After a while you think you’re looking at something that was alive once, but what?
Who knows? At the moment, all we can do is show a few pieces of what we think might be a larger story. I believe the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald Trump to get elected, and whose subjugation and takeover by a furious combination of politicians, enforcement officials, and media then became a priority as soon as Trump took office.
These next few pieces are the result of looking at two discrete data sets, one ranging from mid-2017 to early 2018, and the other spanning from roughly March 2020 through the present. In the first piece focused on that late 2017 period, you see how Washington politicians learned that Twitter could be trained quickly to cooperate and cede control over its moderation process through a combination of threatened legislation and bad press.
In the second, you see how the cycle of threats and bad media that first emerged in 2017 became institutionalized, to the point where a long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election. Requests for moderation were funneled mainly through the FBI, the self-described “belly button” of the federal government (not a joke, an agent really calls it that).
The company leadership knew as far back as 2017 that giving in to even one request to suspend this or that set of accused “hostile foreign accounts” would lead to an endless cycle of such demands. “Will work to contain that”, offered one comms official, without much enthusiasm, after the company caved for the first time that year. By 2020, Twitter was living the hell its leaders created for themselves.
What does it all mean? I haven’t really had time to think it over. Surely, though, it means something. I’ve been amused by the accusation that these stories are “cherry-picked”. As opposed to what, the perfectly representative sample of the human experience you normally read in news? Former baseball analytics whiz Nate Silver chimed in on this front:
December 28, 2022
The Myth of the Nazi Police State – WW2 Documentary Special
World War Two
Published 27 Dec 2022The popular image of the Gestapo is as black leather-jacketed fiends whose spies keep the nation under constant surveillance. They are so powerful that the terrified population has no choice but to sell out its family and friends. But how true is this? Are all Germans living in fear of the Gestapo all the time?
(more…)
November 30, 2022
The widespread anti-lockdown protests in China … and how Apple is helping suppress them
N.S. Lyons admires what can only be described as potentially revolutionary protests across many of China’s big cities and resisting further lockdowns by the government:
Something extraordinary happened in China over the weekend. Not long ago I wrote at length, if in a rather different context, about the vital importance of courage in the defense of the true and the human against the cold, mechanistic evil that is nihilistic technocracy, the machine whose Conditioners forever lust after total control – not only over men, but ultimately over reality itself. Well, now we have just seen a stunning example of such courage in the streets of China, where people rose up to reassert their human dignity in the face of the most dehumanizing machine of control in the world today: the Chinese Communist Party’s “zero-Covid” terror-state.
For three years now, the Chinese government has maintained its policy of draconian city-wide lockdowns, endless daily mass testing and biomedical surveillance, digital Covid-passes that arbitrarily govern every aspect of daily life, vast camps to house those dragged into quarantine for weeks (or longer) at a time, and, more recently, such innovations as “closed-loop” factories, where workers are forced to work, sleep, and “live” completely isolated from the outside world so that they can continue to produce your iPhones.
But now over the past several days protests have erupted in at least a dozen cities and 79 universities across the country, with spontaneous demonstrations – often begun by only a handful of people, or even a single individual – quickly drawing crowds of hundreds, even thousands, of people willing to fearlessly demand an end to the zero-Covid nightmare.
In Wuhan, where it all began, swarming crowds smashed down containment barriers and “liberated” locked-down neighborhoods:
[…]
All across the country, many thousands of these protesters spontaneously echoed many of the same lines:
We don’t want PCR tests. We want to eat.
We don’t want Cultural Revolution. We want reform.
We don’t want lockdowns. We want freedom.
We don’t want a Great Leader. We want the vote.
We don’t want lies. We want dignity.
We aren’t slaves. We are citizens.
These are conspicuously the same lines as those of a banner hung from a Beijing bridge by a lone (since disappeared) protester, Peng Lifa, on the 13th of October, just ahead of the CCP’s 20th Party Congress and Xi Jinping’s re-coronation as Chinese leader for life.
Now, as recordings of the anti-lockdown protests are swiftly censored online, Chinese netizens have often simply been replying with “We saw it” – a phrase referring not just to the protests, but to Peng Lifa’s message.
His final and most striking line, on a second banner, happens to have been:
“Refuse to go to class. Go on strike. Remove the traitor Xi Jinping.”
And indeed in many protests over the last few days the people’s frustration with zero-Covid tyranny translated into something more: an outpouring of raw anger against the CCP and Xi.
Of course, China’s ruling Communist regime isn’t without its loyal supporters and useful idiots like Apple:
Maybe something will come of the COVID lockdown protests in China. Maybe not, if you’re old enough to remember the guy who stood in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, and who was never identified nor ever seen again. More likely, the Chinese Communist Party will crack down again, and the people of China will become compliant again.
And the West will turn a blind eye. Again.
Here’s what was in the latest iPhone update, according to Zachary M. Seward of Quartz:
Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the “everyone” setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones. The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn’t apply anywhere else.
In other words, Chinese iPhone users can’t do or say anything without the CCP knowing about it. Dissent can be quashed before it even starts. The Chinese people can be kept under the CCP’s thumb. And Apple is helping.
November 17, 2022
TikTok (aka “Digital Fentanyl”)
Geoffrey Cain at Common Sense on the malign influence of the massively popular Chinese social media platform on US politics and culture:
The midterm elections of 2022 were many things — a shocker for Republicans, the possible end of Donald Trump, a win for centrist Democrats. Overlooked is the fact that they were also a big turning point for TikTok, the Chinese social-media platform.
TikTok is not only the most trafficked news app for Americans under 30. It was also a major political force this year. Exhibit A: the Senate race in Pennsylvania, in which both Democrat John Fetterman and his Republican rival, Mehmet Oz, deployed TikTok, with Oz railing against the cost of vegetables in one video, and Fetterman slamming Oz for saying “crudité” in a highly effective response. Other candidates who took to TikTok this cycle include Tim Ryan, who ran for Senate in Ohio, and Val Demmings, who ran for Senate in Florida. (Both are Democrats.) The Democratic National Committee, early this year, launched its own TikTok channel.
Now, there are calls to shut it down. Just yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau has “national-security concerns” about TikTok. Last Friday, the top Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, called TikTok “China’s digital fentanyl”. The day before, Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Mike Gallagher, both Republicans, introduced legislation banning the social-media platform, noting that the data of millions of Americans is “effectively controlled” by the Chinese Communist Party. Earlier in the month, Carr also said the U.S. government should ban TikTok.
It’s about time.
Ever since TikTok began expanding into the United States, more than four years ago, we’ve known that it was a disaster waiting to happen. What’s shocking is that it’s taken this long to get serious political attention.
I know all about this. I used to be an investigative reporter in China. In December 2017, I first heard from friends on social media that a Chinese tech unicorn called ByteDance was planning on entering the American market with a new app. It was called TikTok.
Alongside its sibling app, Douyin, which operates only in China, TikTok was poised to sweep up the Gen Z audience in America, with its preference for video snippets of dancing celebrities, DIY projects, cooking demonstrations, skincare routines and other Gen Z’ers singing and dancing in their parents’ kitchens. As the fastest growing social media app ever, it rankled American competitors Facebook and YouTube, which were banned in China.
By October 2018, ByteDance was the world’s most valuable startup, with a valuation of $75 billion.
Four years later, ByteDance is worth $300 billion. TikTok is expected to reach 1.8 billion users globally by the end of the year. And a quarter of American adults under 30 get their news from the social-media app.
There’s a good reason for this success. TikTok has developed one of the most powerful machine-learning algorithms ever — one that is able to reveal people’s unknown desires to themselves.
Every day, every hour, every waking minute, TikTok is hoovering up seemingly infinite bits of information about its users — their tastes, hobbies, political views, sexual preferences, their facial structure, the sound of their voice. Ostensibly, all this is meant to provide a better product. It should also be noted that this information can be used for spying, influencing millions of users — even waging war. Every time we swipe for the next video, every time we post videos of our own, we are helping the world’s most sophisticated police state learn more about us.
May 3, 2022
Is all of social media just a “giant domestic surveillance operation”?
Severian posted this last week, but I’m only just getting caught up now:
I was wrong about Musk buying Twitter. Lot of that going around — the Z Man got a whole podcast on “avoiding error” from his misread of the situation. It’s well worth a listen. I, too, had a “hot take” on Musk’s offer — not that it was particularly hot, as most folks on this side were saying it, but I too thought it was a stunt. After all, Musk, like Bezos and all the other “new commerce” billionaires, don’t exist without massive government support. I figured his “offer” was stoyak — he’s got something in the works in the Imperial Capital and needed to play hardball with somebody.
But I was also working off my longstanding assumption that Twitter, Faceborg, and all the rest are essentially CIA / NSA fronts. When I first heard about Facebook, my first thought was “Wait, don’t we already have Friendster? What does this bring to the table?” My second thought was the first one I’d had about Friendster: “That’s clever, I guess, but how on earth is this going to make money? Even if they saturate it with ads, to the point where it’s unusable — which will happen in about two weeks — they can’t monetize your personal data any farther. People are pretty set in their habits — once the algorithm figures out you’re the kind of guy who likes anime and New Wave music, any further data is useless.”
Being a much more naive, trusting sort back then, I figured it was just stupidity. You know, Pets.com level stupidity. The VC boys were trying to get another dotcom bubble inflated, because if the first one proved anything, it’s that people are dumb and will keep falling for the same obvious scam over and over. I could hear them in the board rooms: “This time, instead of sticking ‘cyber’ in front of everything, we’ll call it ‘Web 2.0.’ Cha-ching!”
Obviously that didn’t happen. So I went with the common explanation that was floating around in those days, that “social media” sites made their money by selling your data to advertisers. But that doesn’t pass the smell test either. For one thing, as I said above, your habits don’t change very much. For another, as anyone who has any experience with them knows, those algorithms really suck. The other day, for instance, I was listening to some old music one of the streaming music sites. And I mean really old. Nothing I’d played the whole morning had been composed after the 17th century, but the service’s algorithm was convinced that what I’d really like to listen to next was some rapper.
Indeed, the whole point of the ads on Pandora, Spotify, whatever seems to be: To annoy you to the point where you pay for their premium service. Pandora, for instance, either really really really believes I want a Surface Pro 8 and some Taco Bell, or they’re just playing those ads every two songs to annoy me into buying the premium service (which is every ad that isn’t Surface Pro or Taco Bell). Which is just bizarre, because I haven’t had Taco Bell since college — which was 30 years ago, and I paid cash — and this essay right here is the first time I have ever even typed the words “Surface Pro 8”, much less looked at the product.
I really wouldn’t be surprised that the “algorithm” is reading itself. Hey, this guy sure has seen a lot of ads for Taco Bell and Surface Pro! He must really want some!
But the algorithm for companies whose entire business model is e-commerce is no better. Amazon seems to have gone to a “push” model — they must be selling their suppliers on the idea that they can push you stuff, which is why they always pimp the same four or five items in the “Amazon’s Choice” recommendations, no matter what you’re searching for. And these again are laughably wrong — the only things I get off Amazon are used history and philosophy books, and stuff for my dog. Based on this, they have concluded that what I’m really looking for are chick lit and beach gear.
Given all that, I came to the conclusion that “social media” (and Amazon too, probably) really only have one customer, who really does have a use for your data, and that customer’s initials are CIA. It’s a giant domestic surveillance operation.
And why wouldn’t it be? The Regime has had a legitimacy problem for a long time, and a “feedback loop” problem for longer than that. Even if we assume no ulterior motives whatsoever — fat chance, but let’s stipulate — the fact remains that public opinion polling, however you want to define it, has a similar problem as psychological studies. Since the vast majority of study participants are college undergrads, what you get is WEIRD — that’s Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, and also in a very narrow age range. Psych studies that purport to be universal are, at their very best, snapshots inside the head of the BCG.
If you haven’t encountered the Basic College Girl, he provided a thumbnail sketch here.
April 25, 2022
Trudeau’s Liberals shocked to discover that not everyone wants the internet censored
The free segment of The Line‘s weekend round-up looked at the federal government’s gone-wrong public consultation about their proposed internet censorship Online Harms bill:
Your Line editors have been diligently seeking out educated comment about the Liberals’ forays into Internet regulation and censorship; as we suspected, they are finding out the hard way that determining which speech is fit to be heard is a philosophical fools’ errand. Only a very little research into the history of liberal norms around free speech could have spared them the trouble, but, alas, this seems to be the lesson that every generation needs to re-learn from first principles.
Well, a little out-of-school learning landed in the laps of the Liberals back in September of last year via a seven-page letter written by Michele Austin, then-Twitter Canada’s head of public policy. She took the government’s proposed Online Harms Bill to task in a submission that was only revealed when this country’s lone Internet warrior, Saint Michael Geist (*sign of the cross*), filed an Access To Information request revealing Austin’s scathing critique.
To wit:
Sacrifices freedom of expression to the creation of a government run system of surveillance of anyone who uses Twitter. Even the most basic procedural fairness requirements you might expect from a government-run system such as notice or warning are absent from this proposal. The requirement to “share” information at the request of Crown is also deeply troubling.
It’s rare to see a piece of proposed legislation so poorly conceived, so profoundly over-reaching, that virtually every organization asked to comment on it proves to be against it. But so it was. As Geist notes, even organizations that one would imagine to be at least nominally in favour of a regulatory regime intended to crack down on unequivocally harmful Internet carcinomas like child porn, hate speech, and terrorism, in fact came out against it. The National Association of Friendship Centres, Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Safe Harbour Outreach Project, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and the National Council of Canadian Muslims all noted that the government’s proposal stood to do much more harm to their respective communities than it would prevent.
Again, even a little bit of historical research would have demonstrated that those dastardly, evil, liberal values of “free speech” have traditionally done more to help marginalized communities than hinder them. But we digress.
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has subsequently announced the government would halt its Online Harms Bill, presumably in the wake of the disastrous consultation process. So the protests did, indeed, work. But as Geist rightly notes, the fact that he even had to spend months formally seeking out these submissions to be publicly released ought to raise serious questions about this government’s commitment to openness and transparency in how it approaches one of the most foundational freedoms we have as citizens. This is not a government that is philosophically well equipped, nor technically able, to control access to information in the way it so clearly wishes to. Something to keep in mind when evaluating its other Internet bills, C-11 and C-18.
I used to regularly post links to Michael Geist’s work, but at some point in the last few months his RSS feed went down and I stopped getting updates. I’ve relinked to his Twitter feed, which hopefully will provide notice when he publishes something on this file.
Today’s post identifies at least four problems. First, lack of transparency runs counter to promises of an open, transparent government. @justintrudeau even introduced a bill on open by default in 2014. Disclosures only via ATIP are not transparency. 2/5
Second, notion that the government was simply consulting on some ideas and will now course correct requires Canadians to overlook the reality that the actual plan was to introduce this as a bill last year. This was the Internet regulation plan. 3/5
Third, “What We Heard” report from @pablorodriguez significantly understated the extent of the public criticism and feedback. Recommendations omitted, criticisms softened. Having now seen the actual submissions, I feel misled. 4/5
Most importantly, this is part of a larger Internet regulation plan:
1️⃣Bill C-11 opens the door to regulating user generated content
2️⃣Bill C-18 mandates payments for links
3️⃣Online harms wasn’t an outlier. It reflects plan for regulating the Internet.
5/5
March 12, 2022
Governments hate Bitcoin and other alternative currencies because they hate competition
Fifteen to twenty years ago, someone put together a funny-but-disturbing presentation on ordering pizza in the future, where the linked and integrated databases of health, banking, insurance, police, etc. are all available even to the order-taker at a pizza delivery place (the earliest example I found was this one). It was unsettling enough in the early oughts, but as N.S. Lyons illustrates, it’s far closer to reality than to fiction today:
You awake to find that today is special: it’s Stimmie Day! When you roll over and check your phone, you see a notification from your FedWallet app letting you know that another $2,000 in FedCoins has just been added directly to your account by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
To be honest, part of you would love to save that money for the long term, given that things have been getting rather uncertain and actually kind of crazy lately, what with the war and the economy and all… But you can’t, since these FedCoins are coded as usable for consumer purchases only, and will expire and vanish in seven days. So you’d better spend em while you’ve got em!
The latest PlayBox it is then. Everyone says Elden Ring 3 is the hottest VR game on the Metaverse right now, and you’ve really wanted to join in. Since you’re stubbornly old fashioned, you decide to check it out at BezosMart on the way home from work today before you get it delivered by drone to your tiny apartment.
But first you begin your day as you always do, with a quick stop at the local Starbrats’ automated, no-contact drive-through latte dispensary. Opening your FedWallet app and vaguely waving your smartphone at the machine is enough to complete the transaction. $14 in FedCoins are instantly deleted from your digital account at the Fed and recreated in Starbrats’ corporate account, well before the sweet, coffee-flavored milk beverage is deposited into your eager, grasping hands.
Your morning starts to go downhill quickly, however, when you realize that your SUV is almost out of gas. You pull the old clunker, with its antiquated combustion engine, into the nearest open station you can find – it looks pretty run-down – and roll up to the pump. A dull-eyed teenager in a facemask inserts a nozzle into your vehicle and waits for you to pre-pay. You wave your phone at the pump. Nothing happens. You try again. Your phone buzzes, and you look at it. There’s a message from the Fed: “You have already spent more than the $400 maximum weekly limit on fossil fuels specified in the FedWallet User Agreement. Your remaining account balance cannot be used to purchase non-renewable energy resources. Please make an alternative purchase. Have you considered a clean, affordable New Energy Vehicle? Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and sustainable world!”
You have in fact considered purchasing a clean, affordable New Energy Vehicle. But they still aren’t very affordable for you, what with the supply chain shortages. Despite the instant credit the Fed would add to your balance when buying an electric car – plus the permanent ten percent general subsidy you automatically receive on every purchase as a BIPOC individual thanks to the Fed’s Reparations Alternatives for Comprehensive Equity (RACE) program – the down payment on a new car would still be more than you can afford, even with your new stimmie coins.
Well, you’re not going to be able to make it to work at the warehouse on what you have in the tank. How could you be so foolish? You’re going to have no choice but to park here and blow a bunch of money on hailing one of those sleek, incredibly expensive self-driving electric cabs to take you there instead. But, as you’re about to tap the screen to do so, you notice there’s a classic fast-food joint next door. Might as well head there first to unload a little stimmie money. Nothing makes you feel better like a greasy breakfast sandwich.
Entering the establishment and sidling up to the old touchscreen kiosk, you order a McKraken with extra bacon. But when you wave your phone to pay, an error message pops up again. “You have exceeded your weekly purchase limit for complex animal protein, as stipulated in the FedWallet User Agreement. Have you considered purchasing a delicious vegan or mealworm alternative? Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and sustainable world!”
This is a sandwich too far for you during an especially hard week. “Ugh FedWallet is so fucking lame!” you post on Twatter as you idle hungrily in front of the kiosk. “Your message has been flagged for review,” says an immediate notification. “As a reminder, using ableist hate speech may impact your ESG score and future financing opportunities. Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and inclusive world!”
“Omg this is absurd, life was so much better before FedCoin, when we still had cash!” you post again to Twatter, unable to control yourself. “Your account has been locked pending national security review,” says a notification from FedWallet. “As a reminder, the proliferation of false or misleading narratives which sow discord or undermine public trust in government institutions is classified as a potential domestic terrorism offence by the Department of Homeland Security. We value your feedback.”
[Updated because I forgot to link to the original post.]
February 11, 2022
QotD: “By their proposals, shall ye know them”
That is why the proposal that the IRS should have access to the data of all bank accounts from which or into which more than $600 a year are paid (hardly a king’s ransom) is so important, despite the fact that it has not been enacted. The very fact that someone wanted to enact it, and thought it right that it should be enacted, is highly significant — and sinister — in itself, for the proposal demonstrates a totalitarian mindset.
The ostensible purpose of the proposal, of course, is the elimination of tax evasion. (Incidentally, I have noticed recently an increasing tendency, in the press and elsewhere, for the term tax avoidance to be used interchangeably with that of tax evasion, as if the difference between legality and illegality were of no real importance. This conflation is itself indicative of a totalitarian attitude, according to which a governmental end may be reached without the necessity for any law.)
The people who proposed that, in effect, every bank account should be routinely available for examination by the IRS, without any specific warrant for such an examination, thereby revealed that they thought that the gathering of tax so important that it superseded all other considerations.
Psalm 24 begins: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.”
A better version, according to the proposers, would be: Money is the government’s, and the fulness thereof, money and they that have any. For it hath founded it upon the printing press, and established it as legal tender.
I do not go as far as some economists of my acquaintance, who believe that tax evasion is a citizen’s civic duty: at least it is not in the circumstances prevailing in any western country, however unsatisfactory they may be. In my own case, I do not evade taxes and even my attempts to avoid them are rather feeble, for unfortunately there is so little at stake.
But I reject completely the idea that, morally, the first call on anyone’s money is the government’s, which in effect has the right to leave you pocket money by its grace and favor after you have paid your taxes at any rate that it likes. This is the very tyranny that the founders of America feared in majoritarian democracy, untempered by inalienable rights — inalienable even, or especially, by or to the government.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Monitoring Bank Accounts Would Make the People of the Government, Not the Government of the People”, The Iconoclast, 2021-11-01.
December 8, 2021
Imperial Japan – A Spy Comedy? – WW2 – Spies & Ties 11
World War Two
Published 7 Dec 2021Japanese spy rings were somewhat successful up until December 1941, but after Pearl Harbor, Japanese intelligence remains only a shell of its former self.
(more…)
October 17, 2021
QotD: Like Justin Trudeau, too many western politicians admire China’s “basic dictatorship”
Then there is the Chinese government’s ability to surveil and control their people – for their own good, of course. How many over here would love a Social Credit System, where they can reward and punish people according to government’s priorities, from environmentally-conscious behaviour to public health considerations. In democracies, the people rate their leaders; in China the leaders rate their people. Just imagine how much more effectively our governments and health authorities would be able to to deal with all of us during the current pandemic if they could “see” and “nudge” every individual at every moment and in every situation. The most dangerous virus to come from China recently is not COVID, it’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” with its siren call of unrestrained power for large sections of our political and economic elites.
Arthur Chrenkoff, “World hearts commies”, The Daily Chrenk, 2021-07-01.
October 9, 2021
QotD: China’s “social credit” policy
The China lobby excuses the policy by comparing it to Western customer loyalty programs and asserting that it’s not in place around the whole country yet. In truth, it’s a typical aspect of Chinese communism, which loosens the reins for a period before tightening them again. Mao instituted the “Thousand Flowers” campaign in the ’50s that encouraged criticism of the party, following up a few years later with the Great Cultural Revolution, in which those critics were shot or sent to the Gobi.
Like it or not, progress of any sort – social, scientific, artistic – is propelled by the mavericks. Beethoven, Tesla, Einstein, Patton, Kubrick, Trump … all individualists – cantankerous, arrogant, belligerent – who pushed against social inertia, no matter what the consequences. Their story, from Socrates on, is the story of the West. With the “Social Credit” program, China is returning to its immemorial preference for stasis, which has led to disaster time and again. The end result will be a society that is stratified, ossified, and petrified. There is evidence that this is occurring right now.
J.R. Dunn, “The Myth of China as Superpower”, American Thinker, 2019-01-09.
