Thursday 12th of December 2024

in the age of relativity, it was hated by female fascists...

I have previously written about the European Union’s (EU) effort to use its infamous Digital Services Act (DSA) to force companies like X to censor Americans, including on postings related to our presidential election. This is a direct assault on our free speech values, and yet the Biden-Harris Administration has not raised a peep of objection. Now, the EU is threatening to set these confiscatory fines with reference to revenue from companies other than X, including Space X.

 

BY JONATHAN TURLEY    Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks

 

The EU has warned Musk that it is allowed to hit online platforms with fines of as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for refusing to censor content, including “disinformation.” The inclusion of companies like Space X is ridiculous but perfectly consistent with the effort of the EU to use the DSA to regulate speech in the United States and around the world.

The EU is arguing that as a “provider” Musk’s entire business portfolio can be included in the fine calculation. It is ridiculous and chilling. Musk’s other companies have nothing to do with the platform policies of X. It is simply an unhinged coercive measure designed to break Musk.

X has objected:

“X Holdings Corp. submits that the combined market value of the Musk Group does not accurately reflect X’s monetization potential in the Union or its financial capacity, In particular, it argues that X and SpaceX provide entirely different services to entirely different users, so that there is no gateway effect, and that the undertakings controlled by Mr. Elon Musk ‘do not form one financial front, as the DMA presumes.'”

However, the abusive calculation is precisely the point. The EU censors are making an example of Musk. If they break us, no company or executive could hope to defy them. They are being cheered on in this effort by an anti-free speech movement that includes America politicians and pundits.

One of the lowest moments came after Elon Musk bought Twitter on a pledge to restore free speech protections, Clinton called upon European officials to force Elon Musk to censor American citizens under the DSA. This is a former democratic presidential nominee calling upon Europeans to force the censorship of Americans.

She was joined recently by another former democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, who called for government crackdowns on free speech.

In my new book on free speech and various columns, I write about the DSA as one of the greatest assaults on free speech in history. As I wrote in the book:

“Under the DSA, users are ’empowered to report illegal content online and online platforms will have to act quickly.’ This includes speech that is viewed not only as ‘disinformation’ but also ‘incitement.’ European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager has been one of the most prominent voices seeking international censorship. At the passage of the DSA, Vestager was ecstatic in declaring that it is ‘not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.’”

The pressure on Musk’s other companies has also been ramping up in the United States. Recently, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.”

It is all part of Musk mania and the need for the anti-free speech movement to break the only executive who has defied the pressure from this alliance of media, academic, corporate, and government officials.

As I have discussed previously, there is a crushing irony in all of this. The left has made “foreign interference” with elections a mantra of claiming to be defending democracy. Yet, it applauds EU censors threatening companies that carry an interview with a targeted American politician. It also supports importing such censorship and blacklisting systems to the United States. When you agree with the censorship, it is not viewed as interference, but an intervention.

Anti-free speech advocates like Clinton are now going old school. After trying to convince Americans to embrace censorship and blacklisting, they are now praising governments like Brazil and the EU for directly imposed speech regulations on American citizens.

The question is where is the Biden-Harris Administration and Congress. You have a foreign government forcing the censorship of speech of American citizens. We routinely impose reciprocal trade barriers on countries for interfering with our markets. Yet, when a government seeks to curtail political speech in the United States, our leaders are silent.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/10/23/musk-mania-european-censors-warn-musk-that-they-may-level-fines-based-on-all-of-this-businesses/

 

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         Gus Leonisky

silencing pens....

 

Literary Institutions Are Pressuring Authors to Remain Silent About Gaza

    Requiring authors remain silent about war at the risk of losing their livelihoods is not only ironic but also sinister.

 

When writer and disability justice activist Alice Wong received a MacArthur Fellowship earlier this month, she shared a statement about accepting it “amidst the genocide happening in Gaza.” The backlash was swift, with a deluge of posts on X attacking Wong’s character and accusing her of antisemitism.

This conflation of opposition to Israel’s military action with hatred of Jewish people is only one part of a broader wave of political and social repression that is attempting to silence writers speaking out against the war. In the past month alone, authors who have criticized Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza — which is funded largely by the U.S. — have been labeled extremists, been suspended and firedfrom faculty jobs, and targets of defamation and harassment.

I had my own recent experience with the latter following an incident with the New York State Writers Institute’s Albany Book Festival. I reached out privately to the festival organizers in support of a fellow author, Aisha Abdel Gawad, expressing concern about the public rhetoric of the moderator with whom we were to share a panel. In social media posts and published articles, the moderator mocked people who advocate for a ceasefire by calling them “terror apologists” and other names. Such rhetoric seemed disturbing in its mischaracterization of those mourning the loss of life, including Palestinian lives. In response, the assistant director of the Writers Institute emailed the moderator calling our concerns “crazy,” going so far as to fabricate a story that I refused “to be on a panel with a ‘Zionist,’” a message that was then made public. This resulted in death and rape threats, harassing messages and the loss of professional opportunities for me and Abdel Gawad.

To set the record straight, I neither refused to be on the panel nor used the word “Zionist,” but this clarification, while necessary, is not the point. The implication is that vitriol directed at those opposing war and genocide is acceptable; objecting to such vitriol is not.

Many of us who have spoken out against Israel’s war on Gaza have not only opposed the war, but also drawn connections between the violence there and other interlocking crises: mass death and displacement in Sudan, the Congo and Haiti; the disparity between U.S. military funding for war and funding for escalating climate catastrophes; the expansion of carceral systems, including surveillance and militarization of policing; and the increased criminalization of dissent following the racial justice protests in 2020, quelling connections between the global and the domestic. Suppression of dissent also suppresses connections between people and communities in a time of organized abandonment, a time when we need each other even more.

For writers, censorship and suppression is also taking place within notable arts institutions. PEN America — which canceled its 2024 annual awards this spring after nearly half the nominees withdrew their books from consideration due to the organization’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza — is now asking publishers to confirm with authors that they want their books to be considered for the 2025 awards, ostensibly to avoid finalists again withdrawing in protest and to circumvent a writers’ boycott of the organization. Canada’s Giller Prize, which was plagued by protests and withdrawals over its primary sponsor’s financial investment in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, has made confirmation of intent to participate in the awards — attempting to ensure that finalists will not decline the prize or use the opportunity to speak out about Palestine — a requirement for author eligibility.

To pressure authors to remain silent about institutional response to war in order to be eligible for prestigious literary prizes is not only ironic — PEN America’s mission, for instance, is to protect freedom of expression — but sinister. A culture that demands certain political allegiances from its writers and artists at the risk of losing career opportunities is one that is antithetical to democratic values, and harkens back to the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist that barred writers from employment on suspicions of “subversive” and “un-American” leanings.

In many of the attacks I received, the senders referenced my race in their threats, suggesting I should shut up or meet with physical violence. Yet I, too, have my own stake in speaking out against war and occupation. I was born in the U.S., in part because, like so many children of immigrants, of U.S. military presence in my ancestors’ home country — the Philippines, a former U.S. colony. My parents immigrated during a period of martial law, led by U.S.-supported dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who imprisoned and disappeared thousands of journalists, writers and editors. Marcos’s son, now currently president, recently expanded U.S. military access to Philippines bases.

Much of my writing has explored the ways in which Asian assimilation in the U.S. is negotiated, including our complicity in U.S. imperialism: As Viet Thanh Nguyen writes, “The condition of our belonging, our inclusion, is our silence.” Advocatesagainst anti-Asian violence focus on very real problems of harassment, bullying and discrimination, but stop short of extending the connections globally to include the violence of the U.S. “forever wars” in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. To be Asian American is to carry this dissonance, as our Americanness hinges on our acceptance of the violence carried out in our names and against our people. It hinges on our obedience, our gratitude.

I’m a novelist. I study and teach the craft of writing stories. I can trace how storytelling has been used to vilify in order to legitimize violence — including the recent framing of immigration as a “border crisis,”insidious misinformation about Haitian Americansand transgender people, and references to Palestinians as “human animals.”

Although stories can be used to inflict suffering, the opposite is also true. Writers choose our words for clarity and truth, to build love and solidarity. Failing to do so can harden our hearts, making us more susceptible to justifying harm done to others. And by dehumanizing others, we also harm ourselves. It is our ability to create connections — and the power of these connections — that makes writers a target for repression, and why it’s critical to withstand it. Our belonging is not contingent on our silence; our humanity is contingent on breaking it.

JOIN US IN DEFENDING THE TRUTH BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

As we face a slew of right-wing attacks on democracy, the future of journalism is uncertain. 

 

https://truthout.org/articles/literary-institutions-are-pressuring-authors-to-remain-silent-about-gaza/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

“It’s hard to do cartoons without a pad…”

         Gus Leonisky