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The Patriot Act on steroids: D.C. Uniparty wants to use anti-TikTok legislation as Trojan horse for censorship and surveillance

TikTok is indeed a pestilence upon our society.

But there are right ways to go about minimizing this “digital opium” and its impact on our lives, and other means that will allow the American government to leverage the situation to further curtail our individual rights.

And unsurprisingly, the latter idea is making lawmakers in the beltway beyond giddy this week.

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act (S.686), which was introduced in the Senate earlier this month, would do much more than just ban TikTok.

This bill is no mere “TikTok ban,” it is a mechanism for a massive, sweeping surveillance and censorship overhaul.  

The RESTRICT Act goes far, far beyond potentially banning TikTok. It gives the government virtual unchecked authority over the U.S. communications infrastructure. The incredibly broad language includes the ability to “enforce any mitigation measure to address any risk” to “national security” today and in any “potential future transaction.”

The Senate legislation currently has 19 cosponsors, all of whom are Uniparty members in good standing. It is fully “bipartisan,” consisting of 9 democrats and 10 republicans. 

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Agatha Christie Books Get Woke Makeover, Join Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming

The sensitivity readers have found another target: Agatha Christie.

Books by the acclaimed mystery author—who was born in the 19th century and passed away in 1976—have been edited, ostensibly to comport with modern sensibilities. “The new editions of Christie’s works are set to be released or have been released since 2020 by HarperCollins, which is said by insiders to use the services of sensitivity readers,” noted The Telegraph. “It has created new editions of the entire run of Miss Marple mysteries and selected Poirot novels.”

As was the case with recent edits to the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming, the changes hardly seem necessary; there are few readers clamoring for them. The sensitivity readers, who are hired to rewrite texts and prevent offense, are making the books less colorful and descriptive. In the original Death on the Nile, some characters were described as Nubian—as in the ethnic group from the region of Nubia in northern Africa—but no longer. A character in The Mysterious Affair at Styles who was referred to as a Jew—because, well, he is a Jew—is now just a person. And a servant identified as black no longer has a race at all.

It’s one thing to change outdated ethnic references or references that specifically malign a specific race. Christie is no stranger to that: Her 1939 book, And Then There Were None, was originally published under the name Ten Little Niggers in the United Kingdom, where the racial slur was not as broadly offensive. (The book was named after a children’s rhyme.)

It’s quite another matter to delete all references to ethnicity because… why do it? Who is offended by knowing the race of a specific character? Should books cease acknowledging Africans, Jews, and Indians?

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Are Americans More Antisemitic Than They Were Four Decades Ago?

At the end of 1980, under the headline “Survey Finds Sharp Rise in Anti-Semitic Incidents,” The New York Times reported that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had counted “377 cases of assaults and vandalism…against properties” that year, plus “112 bodily assaults or harassments.” By comparison, the ADL had reported “129 property incidents” in 1979. But Nathan Perlmutter, then the organization’s director, “said that part of the 1980 increase might have reflected improved procedures introduced this year in collecting and evaluating information.”

That sort of caveat is conspicuously missing from this year’s ADL audit and from the Times story about it. “The number of antisemitic incidents in the United States last year was the highest since the Anti-Defamation League began keeping track in 1979,” the Times reports. But there is a difference between “the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States” and the number counted by the ADL, whose annual tally relies on reporting by “victims, law enforcement, the media and partner organizations.”

In addition to actual changes in antisemitic incidents, the ADL’s numbers are apt to be affected by changes in reporting behavior and in the organization’s efforts to collect information. Those factors don’t mean the ADL’s narrative of rising antisemitism in the United States, which is supported by recent survey data, should be dismissed out of hand. But they do complicate the picture in ways that the ADL and the Times fail to acknowledge, especially when it comes to the implicit claim that anti-Jewish bigotry is more prevalent today than it was four decades ago.

Per capita, the ADL counted more than five times as many antisemitic incidents in 2022 as it did in 1980. It does not follow that Americans are five times as likely to hate Jews as they were 43 years ago.

The ADL’s survey data do not support that inference. In 2022, it reports, 20 percent of Americans at least “somewhat” believed “six or more anti-Jewish tropes,” compared to 29 percent in 1964 and 20 percent in 1992. That number has gone up and down over the years, and it rose by 82 percent, from 11 percent to 20 percent, between 2019 and 2022.

During the same period, the number of ADL-reported antisemitic incidents rose by 75 percent, which is consistent with the premise that the organization’s tallies reflect a real trend. But these two sets of numbers do not always track each other so neatly. Between 1992 and 1998, for example, the measure of antisemitic attitudes fell by 40 percent, while the number of incidents that the ADL counted fell by just 7 percent. Between 1998 and 2002, when survey-measured antisemitism rose by 42 percent, the number of reported incidents dropped by 3 percent.

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The RESTRICT act aims to tackle TikTok. But it’s overly-broad and has major privacy and free speech implications.

Senator Mark Warner’s Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (“RESTRICT”) Act is currently in Senate procedure, as is widely thought to be targeting China‘s TikTok in particular.

However, those who bothered to read the text of the proposed act – which will next be considered by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, are warning that it is not merely about TikTok, but aims to grant wide powers over all forms of domestic and foreign communications to the government – such as enforcing “any” mitigating measure to deal with risks to national security.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

And, observers critical of these legislative activities note, there would be no due process in taking these measures, and not much in terms of safeguards.

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Gov. Hochul Proposes Heavy Fines for Illicit Cannabis Shops

Illegal cannabis sellers could see sky-high fines under new legislation proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday, giving state officials greater power to crack down on New York’s illicit pot market.

The bill would set fines up to $10,000 a day for shops that sell cannabis without a license, and businesses found possessing illegal marijuana plants or products could be hit with penalties as high as $200,000, according to the proposed rules.

It would also give the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), the state agency overseeing marijuana retail licensing, the authority to seize illegal products and allow OCM to shut down unlicensed cannabis retailers. 

“The continued existence of illegal dispensaries is unacceptable, and we need additional enforcement tools to protect New Yorkers from dangerous products and support our equity initiatives,” Hochul said in a statement.

Under the proposed law, OCM could investigate any location growing, distributing or selling cannabis that has not been sourced from a legal distributor and taxed. OCM, the attorney general or local police would be able to enforce a preliminary injunction to stop businesses suspected of selling cannabis without a license, according to the bill.

Hochul’s proposal is the latest move in a state and city effort to shutter the thousands of illegal pot shops that have cropped up in New York City, threatening its fledgling legal market. 

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‘State-sanctioned kidnapping’: California bill would give therapists power to take children over 12 from parents ‘without accusation, evidence, or trial’

A California Democrat has proposed a bill that would allow a mental health professional to place a child as young as 12 in a residential shelter facility without parental knowledge or consent and without there being any prior allegations of incest or child abuse.

The stated purpose of AB 665, introduced by Assembly Member Wendy Carrillo, is to bring two existing laws into alignment. Currently children age 12 and over are able to consent to receiving mental health treatment or counseling services but cannot consent to being placed into a residential shelter facility unless deemed either a risk to themselves or others, or in cases where the minor is an alleged victim of incest or child abuse. AB 665 seeks to remove these caveats.

The bill is strongly opposed by Our Duty, an international group of parents of children who are, or were, gender-questioning, who believe the law would amount to “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

According to Erin Friday, co-lead of Our Duty, the bill will give counselors unfettered control over children age 12 and above. In a letter to the state assembly, Friday gives the example of a hypothetical 6th grader who informs her school counselor that she is a “trans boy.” Friday argues that if AB 665 were to be enacted, that child may not come home from school that day but could instead be sent to an “LGBTQ housing facility.” 

“The parents will have no idea what happened to their child,” writes Friday. “Imagine their fear and anxiety. These parents are criminalized without an accusation, evidence or trial.”

AB 665 states that a “shocking 78 percent of LGBTQ+ youth who were surveyed shared they had considered suicide,” and most had done so in the last year, and that nearly one-third had made an attempt in the past year.

The bill goes on to state that LGBTQ+ youth experience depression and anxiety, as well as other negative outcomes, due to rejection from parents, harassment in school, and the “overall LGBTQ negativity present in society.”

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The New York Times Is A Disgusting Militarist Smut Rag

I hate The New York Times. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. With every fiber of my being, from the depths of my immortal soul.

The “paper of record” for the most murderous and tyrannical nation on earth, The New York Times has been run by the same family since the late 1800s, during which time it has supported every depraved American war and has reliably dished out propaganda to manufacture consent for the political status quo necessary for the operation of a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood and suffering. It is a plague upon our world, and it should be destroyed, buried, and peed on.

And I am being charitable.

Among the latest items of unforgivable militarist smut churned out by the Times is an article titled “An Anxious Asia Arms for a War It Hopes to Prevent,” which freakishly frames the US as just a passive, innocent witness to the US military encirclement of China.

Times author Damien Cave writes ominously that China’s president Xi Jinping “aims to achieve a ‘national rejuvenation’ that would include displacing the United States as the dominant rule-setter in the region,” as though it makes perfect sense for the US to be the “dominant rule-setter” in the continent of Asia.

(You see lines like this in The New York Times constantly; earlier this month the Times editorial board bemoaned the fact that “the United States had tried with little success to persuade or compel China to abide by American rules,” like that’s a perfectly sane and normal line to write. Other nations make demands, the US makes “rules”. These people really do begin with the premise that the US government owns the entire world, and then write from there.)

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AFRICOM Says African Coup Leaders Share ‘Core Values’ With US Military

Gen. Michael Langley, the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), was grilled by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Thursday about African soldiers who received US military training and went on to carry out coups.

Langley insisted only a “very small number” of Africans who receive US training later go on to be involved in coups against civilian governments and said the programs focus on “core values.”

When asked by Gaetz if the US shares “core values” with Guinea coup leader Col. Mamady Doumbouy, Langley replied, “Absolutely … In our curriculum, we do.” Doumboy and his forces carried out a coup in 2021 while US Green Berets were in the country training them, and he still leads Guinea to this day.

Gaetz also referenced a January 2022 coup in Burkina Faso, which was led by Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damib, who had a long history of participating in US training exercises. Later that year, in September 2022, Damib was ousted in another coup led by Capt. Ibrahim Traore. When asked by journalist Nick Turse if Traore also received US training, the Pentagon said it didn’t know.

Writing for Responsible Statecraft, Turse said since 2008, US-trained soldiers in Africa have “attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries, including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali (three times), Mauritania, and the Gambia.”

Langley insisted that the “core values” AFRICOM’s training focuses on include “respect for civilian governance” and said the command will “continue with our persistence in assuring that they harbor democratic norms, democratic values, apolitical.” Gaetz said those values aren’t sticking.

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CNN Blasted After Lecturing People Not To Use ‘Digital Blackface’

Mass backlash has ensued after a CNN report accused white people of using ‘digital blackface’ by posting memes of black people’s reactions as a way of expressing their feelings about situations.

In the piece, headlined What’s ‘digital blackface?’ And why is it wrong when White people use it, CNN writer John Blake states the following:

“If you’re White and you’ve posted a GIF or meme of a Black person to express a strong emotion, you may be guilty of wearing ‘digital blackface,”

Blake argues that such memes and gifs are “radicalized reactions,” and that while black people “get a pass” for using them, white people posting them have “inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.”

Blake goes on to declare that the use of the memes by whitey is a “modern-day repackaging of minstrel shows.”

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Sympathy For The Devil: The True Story of The Process Church of the Final Judgment

“Google ‘The Process Church of the Final Judgement’ and you’ll discover a long list of conspiracy theories. Only now, former members reveal the truth about the misunderstood group once dubbed ‘One of the most dangerous Satanic cults in America.'”