The ACLU in NYT on why the union of Silicon Valley monopolies -- Apple, Google and Amazon -- to remove Parler from the internet is so problematic. While ACLU is largely just a liberal pressure group now, they still have some real civil liberties lawyers:
Tech monopolies -- FB, Google, Apple, Amazon -- have more concentrated wealth & power than any in history. They have used brute force 3 times in 3 months to manipulate US politics: censoring NY Post, banning Trump, destroying Parler.
And liberals are overwhelmingly supportive.
That these Silicon Valley monopolies are grave menaces to political freedom & economic well-being is *not* a right-wing view.
The most comprehensive report warning of these dangers was issued 3 months ago by a Democratic House Sub-Committee. Read this:
Authoritarians never believe they're authoritarians, no matter how much censorship, surveillance, jingoism, & imprisonment they demand.
They tell themselves their enemies are so uniquely evil and dangerous - terrorists - that anything done in the name of fighting them is noble.
Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler?
Zero.
The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start.
For those asking the basis for that last claim: I spent the weekend reporting on the removal of Parler from the internet, including reviewing lots of documents and interviewing people associated with the companies involved, including Parler.
The article will be up shortly.
Silicon Valley defenders: If you don't like Big Tech's censorship, just start your own social media platform with rules you want.
Parler: OK, we did. We're the country's most popular app!
Amazon/Apple/Google: We're uniting to take you off the internet with our monopoly power.
I wonder how many people subserviently cheering Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Google billionaires for destroying Parler a) have ever been on Parler, b) know anything about it besides what CNN & NBC censors have shown them, & c) compared the hate speech there to what's on FB & YouTube.
Amazon -- which already has a $600 million contract to provide services to the CIA, and is desperately bidding to make that far more -- is deeply opposed to violence and fascism.
Jeff Bezos will use his monopoly power to make the world better:
A residual guardian of GOP establishment foreign policy - @RichLowry - urges rejection of Tulsi by denouncing her support for Snowden.
To do so, Lowrey falsely claims Snowden "handed [NSA docs] over to Julian Assange’s Wikileaks."
Snowden never gave a single doc to WikiLeaks.
This isn't a small error, nor is it an excusable one. Anyone who knows even the most basic facts of the Snowden story -- which should be a requirement for opining so didactically about it -- knows he only gave docs to the Guardian (through me) and WPost (through Laura Poitras).
Lowry also repeats the standard establishment smear against Snowden -- totally false -- that he "defected to Russia."
Even if he had, it'd be understandable - Obama DOJ tried to imprison him for life -- but Ben Rhodes admitted Snowden tried to leave Russia and they trapped him.
Pigs are as intelligent and socially complex -- if not more so -- than dogs. Morally despicable factory farms keep pigs in cases so small they can never turn around, step on their babies, and go insane. The whole industry is a menace to public health, and destroys family farms.
You don't have to be vegan to be disgusted by industrialized abuse of animals. Animals are among the most majestic and beautiful things on earth. They feel pain, suffering and joy from connection.
Most people can't bear to look at what happens inside these monstrous facilities.
Under the past several presidents - including Biden and Trump - the agencies required to regulate factory farms, including to stop abuse, have been run by industry cretins who ignore the law and then get rewarded after.
Beyond that, the letter itself that they fed to their puppet Bertrand (now promoted to CNN as a reward for her service) explicitly referenced claims in the last part of the letter that the materials on the laptop were "Russian disinformation": exactly what Brennan denies.
Indeed, this pre-election lie from CIA goons had only purpose: to protect Biden by deceiving key institutions to believe the materials were unreliable because they were "Russian disinformation."
That's how people like Jen Psaki promoted it, and it's why Big Tech censored it.
The only thing more stunning than watching the US Government forcibly close a speech, information and community social media platform that 170 million of its citizens voluntarily chose to use is seeing that it's Trump, almost alone in DC, fighting to keep it open:
If you think that TikTok was banned was due to fears of China, then you haven't been paying attention. That was the original impetus for it (including under Trump), but everyone involved says the reason it got enough votes was fear of Israel criticism:
A Globo e autoridades brasileiras alegaram que a descrição de Zuckerberg das ordens "secretas" de censura do Brasil eram "sem provas".
Isso é desinformação. Há provas esmagadoras para isso. Em abril, a @Folha publicou um Editorial condenando a censura de Moraes e seu sigilo:
Enquanto a Globo defendeu repetidamente Moraes e suas ordens secretas de censura — da mesma forma que defendeu tudo o que Sergio Moro fez — a Folha, em 2024, condenou repetidamente o esquema de Moraes como perigoso, antidemocrático e inconstitucional: