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Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
@shellenberger
Jan 15, 2024 • 5 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
This Video Can Stop Totalitarianism

Imagine for a moment that you wanted to seize control over the Internet and put in place a system of mass censorship worldwide. How would you do it?

You wouldn’t advertise your intentions. You’d hide them. You’d claim there was a rise in hate speech and misinformation and that it was hurting vulnerable people.

You wouldn’t take on powerful interests. You’d pick on individual citizens. You’d say that they were on the verge of committing real-world violence.

And you wouldn’t start in a big nation. You’d find some small country to start. You’d get their politicians to go out on a limb for your agenda.

That’s precisely what’s happening. Politicians in Ireland are, at this moment, attempting to ram through legislation that would allow the police to invade the homes of ordinary citizens, search their phones and computers, and throw them in prison for “hate speech.”

It’s understandable that people find all of this hard to believe. I find it hard to believe. It sounds like a “Black Mirror” episode.

But it’s not a “Black Mirror” episode. It’s real life. And it’s unfolding in Ireland at this very moment.

We don’t know who all is behind the plot to censor the Internet, but we know there is one.

We had thought that the Irish government had abandoned its totalitarian proposal. A scrappy, inspiring group, Free Speech Ireland, @FreeSpeechIre had successfully pushed back on the proposal last year, putting the government on the defensive.

But then a deranged man stabbed a schoolteacher and two children last November, triggering anti-immigration riots. Ireland’s Prime Minister and Justice Minister used the riots to bring back their hate legislation.

This time, Free Speech Ireland was ready. Its founders reached out to us and asked us to help raise the alarm.

We did, and you responded with support for the organization. Free Speech Ireland has now created a barnburner of a television and online advertisement that it will run for the next week.

But it’s not enough. Free Speech Ireland needs to raise $100,000 in the next 48 hours so it can run the ad across Ireland.

We will donate 100% of donations made to Environmental Progress to Free Speech Ireland for its inspiring work.

We can win this battle, but not without your help. Please take a moment now to donate.

Together we can prevent this “Black Mirror” nightmare from becoming a reality.
You can donate to Free Speech Ireland directly



Or you can donate to our nonprofit, Environmental Progress, and we will send 100% of all donations to Free Speech Ireland

freespeechireland.ie/support-us/
environmentalprogress.org/give
Please share these posts and follow @FreeSpeechIre !!!

@FreeSpeechIre Bravo!!! LFG!!!
@FreeSpeechIre People say “hate speech” causes real world violence, but they said the same thing about violent movies and video games, and that turned out to be wrong. We reviewed the literature and found very little evidence to support the link between words and violence.

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More from @shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 20
Biden pardoned Fauci. He says it’s not an admission of guilt. But if Fauci were innocent, no pardon would be needed. The evidence suggests Fauci helped create the Covid pandemic, and then covered it up. The investigation must go forward. All Covid & Fauci Files must be released.
Fauci led an aggressive disinformation effort to discredit the lab leak hypothesis. If the Covid virus didn’t escape from the lab, why did he deliberately spread false or misleading information about it? Why did he repeatedly interfere in the investigation?
Fauci played the media like a fiddle. They called the lab lead a “conspiracy theory.” Then, documents showed that Fauci’s main allies had sought to insert a furin cleavage site in the exact place where it exists on the Covid virus. Reason #7,969 for why the legacy media is dead.
Read 7 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 17
Strong words from LA fire fighters to the chief: "[I]f you had done things right... fatalities would have been reduced, property would have been saved....the preventive systems... were nonexistent... We attribute this to... lack of experience, arrogance, inability to lead..."
Another good scoop by @RichMcHugh @NewsNation

Excellent video segment too:

Read 5 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 15
January 2: National Weather Service (NWS) warns of “extreme fire weather conditions” in Los Angeles

Jan. 3: NWS repeats warning in special LA briefing

Jan. 4: LA Mayor Karen Bass flies to Ghana on junket

Jan. 7: LA goes up in flames as Bass poses for photos at cocktail party Image
January 2: "...extreme fire weather conditions... Potential Fire Weather Risk" Image
January 3: "Critical Fire Conditions... fire season will continue in to the New Year!" Image
Read 8 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 9
Over the next few weeks you’re going to hear Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and the Democratic Party tell you that there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent the fires from destroying Los Angeles.

Those will be lies. They could have prevented them. Governor Newsom cut the funding for preventing forest fires and failed to build sufficient water resources for fighting fires. Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.5 million in funding for the Los Angeles Fire Department and then went to Ghana even though she knew of the risk of catastrophic fires.

It’s true that California, in general, and Los Angeles, in particular, are fiery places. It’s true that the Santa Ana winds made the fires worse.

But Newsom and Bass have known about those hazards for all of their careers and failed to deal with them. Their rank incompetence and lack of leadership are shocking and scandalous.

It’s hard to overstate how badly they screwed up water management. LA firefighters haven’t had the water they needed. Newsom hasn’t built the new water reservoirs that Los Angeles needed. And Newsom even cut the budget for water infrastructure projects last year.

Why is that? Part of the reason is that they were focused on other things. Making the fire department more racially diverse. Climate change. Homelessness.

And the reason they were focused on those things is because those are what the radical Left that controls the Democratic party wanted them to focus on.

Year after year, they do nothing while focusing on things like trans and Trump and climate and ignoring the things that really matter to the people of California.

The Democrats in California aren’t like Democrats in other states. They are radicals. I would know, since when I was a young radical I moved to California for that reason.

As many of us get older, we become more moderate. We become more practical. We understand firefighters and police officers are necessary. We are reminded of the importance of things like safe streets and hard work and good schools.

But more than that, I saw the consequences of radical progressive policies on the environment, homelessness, crime, education, water, and everything else. Violent criminals, in particular, are devouring Los Angeles, Oakland, and the rest of California.

The people who control the Democratic Party in California worship books about Los Angeles, like City of Quartz by the Marxist author Mike Davis. In that book, Davis claims that the problem in Los Angeles is that too much money goes to things like firefighting to protect wealthy neighborhoods.

They did the same thing on crime and homelessness. They failed to provide adequate funding to the police. They weakened the laws that allowed for burglaries and robberies. They subsidized homelessness, attracting homeless people from around the United States to camp illegally and start fires.

Over half of the fires in places like Los Angeles and Oakland are caused by the homeless committing arson, often out of some petty revenge.

We don’t know what started all of the fires, but at least one started within the housing subdivision. Others may have started in the interface between housing and wildlands. Or it could have been started by the homeless.

Whatever the case, California and LA didn’t invest enough in preventing fires because they were distracted by radical Left causes.

When Rick Caruso ran for Mayor against Karen Bass, he called for increasing the fire department’s budget.

A big part of the reason he lost is simply because he was white. I watched focus groups in 2022 and the most racist people were white liberals in Los Angeles. When they discussed the mayoral race, the white people overwhelmingly said they couldn’t vote for a white man and had to vote for a black woman because she was black.

The Latino men and women in separate focus groups were much less racist. They wanted to know about their policies.

It was the radical Left that invented the racist idea that white people alive today should feel guilty about things white people did in the past. Racist white guilt led people in Los Angeles and California to vote against a guy who would have prevented those fires.

And so, over the next few weeks, when you hear Governor Gavin Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and the Democratic Party tell you that there’s nothing they could have done to prevent the fires from destroying Los Angeles, don’t believe them.

It’s time for California to grow up and move beyond the juvenile Leftism that has destroyed the state and destroyed Los Angeles. We can’t trust our leaders to run anything. It’s not just incompetence. It’s that they really don’t care.

It’s time for Californians to demand new leaders — ones who aren’t beholden to the radicals who control the Democratic Party. .
Called it. Here's @MayorOfLA claiming that the $17.5 million she cut from the budget " really did not impact what we've been going through over the last few days."
The LA Fire Chief disagrees. Last December she said her department was "facing unprecedented operational challenges due to... budgetary reductions" that had "affected the Department's ability to maintain core operations" including "fire prevention..." and "the Department's capacity to prepare for... large-scale emergencies, including wildfires..."

Couldn't be any clearer.Image
Read 5 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 8
The media is ridiculing Trump for saying that wind turbines are killing the whales. But they are. There were 12 whale deaths off the East Coast in December alone. The North Atlantic right whale species will go extinct unless the Trump administration acts to end the slaughter.
The science is clear. The increased wind industry boat traffic is behind the whale deaths. Scientists have also documented illegal, high-decibel noise, which separates mothers from babies. The Biden administration is covering up the evidence for money.

saverightwhales.org/media
Here is the full documentary, "Thrown to the Wind." It contains and explains all of the scientific evidence. The government agencies have refused to conduct the necessary research and are working with the media, paid off by the industry, to spread disinformation.
Read 4 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Jan 6
Justin Trudeau has resigned. He framed himself as an honest, caring, and compassionate leader. He was not. He falsely smeared his critics as Nazis. He justified freezing bank accounts using faked intelligence. And he spread disinformation while demanding censorship. Let's dig in: Image
Trudeau spread disinformation to persecute his critics. He froze their bank accounts. He demanded censorship. We have to talk about the malignant narcissism of Justin Trudeau:

Trudeau froze the bank accounts of protesters by claiming it was an emergency. It wasn't. Public's @galexybrane helped uncover proof that his government used faked intelligence to illegally frame protesting truckers as violent extremists.

Read 5 tweets

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