Here one day and gone the next.
In case you haven’t heard, Jack Dorsey resigned “with immediate effect” the other day from Twitter. This was the social media company he founded way back when.
Back then, it was supposed to be a platform for free speech (as was Facebook, YouTube, et al) but because it was “too free” and it proved to be too useful to candidate Trump, Dorsey and his elves worked overtime to make sure that would never be the case again.
That’s the long and short of it.
In essence, the last three-plus years have been an intense exercise in reversing course. No longer was social media to be used as a free platform for free speech. If anything, it’s now just the opposite. And yes, that’s because Trump scrambled their brains.
But as in all nihilistic enterprises, the revolution eventually devours its young. And so, for some reason, Jack Dorsey had to resign “immediately”.
Now, this is condign punishment. Good riddance. Don’t let the door hits you on the way out. (And try not to eat marijuana for breakfast.)
Unfortunately, the person who’s taking over after him, Parag Agrawal, is going to be worse. Far worse. Infinitely worse. He’s announced a new policy, one ostensibly designed to “protect” private citizens (read: no more posting of antifa mugshots by Andy Ngo) so that now, we will be kept even more in the dark than we have been by the corporate media.
You know what I mean: where we read things in The Washington Post like “an SUV plowed into a Christmas parade in Waukesha”. They buried that story on page A-22 for good measure. You see, this story, like so many others, didn’t fit the narrative (if you know what I mean).
So, the new guy is going to pick up where Dorsey left off. For our own doubleplusgood, we plebs will be increasingly coddled and protected from hurtful, doubleplusungood stories. Because reasons.
I’ll tell you what, the next time I hear some talking head on MSNBCNNFOX (especially FOX: I’m looking at you, Brian Kilmeade) tell us that we have to send soldiers to the Sandbox because they are “fighting for our freedoms”, I’m going to climb on the roof and hoot and holler like Yosemite Sam, firing pistols in the air and yell at the top of my lungs: WHAT FREEDOMS?!?! (Two-click access to internet pornography is not freedom. It’s just a way to pacify us while they take our real freedoms away.)
In other words, I could get all pissy.
Or I could step back and realize that the reason they’re pissing on our shoes and telling us it’s raining is because they’re the ones who are losing it.
Consider: YouTube is no divulging how many people hit the “Dislike” button. Like Agrawal, they’re doing this in order to “protect” the fee-fees of independent content creators. So, YouTube recently, so Twitter now.
We’ve actually been down this road before if you think about it. A few years ago, several liberal websites stopped allowing readers to publish their opinions –pro or con–in their comments sections. You know, some liberal would write about how wonderful the new Baphomet drag-queen story hour at the library is, or how Lori Lightfoot is a wonderfully “progressive” mayor, only to be barraged by hundreds of comments exploding in outrage.
So basically, the jig is up. And so rather than expose their harebrained ideas to further ridicule, they continue to chip away at free speech, one of the most vital mechanisms necessary for a free society to operate. That’s why, increasingly, most liberal talking heads pontificate rather than engage in honest debate. They know they’d lose but they believe that by depressing contrary opinions, they can fool us into believing whatever idiotic thing they’re saying at the moment. Whether it be WMD in Iraq, the necessity for gay marriage, or why men should be able to have abortions. It’s all good in their eyes. In other words, because the public square is devoid of contrary opinion (thanks to their efforts), they think that they can maintain moral high ground.
Never mind the fact that because the reason the public square is silent in the first place is because they have suppressed free speech. (Remember Parler?) That’s a variant of “who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes”?
So, merrily we go along the primrose path that our betters have laid out for us. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’ll work –up to a point. It worked in communist countries, but nobody was fooled. The people went along mainly because of fear. Fear of the Gulag at first, then fear of losing a job or a university appointment. Things like that.
We don’t have to fear the Gulag –yet.
And given the fact that the Establishment is resorting to these soft-Stalinist tactics, we do have reason to hope.
Regardless, we fight on.
(A trifecta of good news) ———————>
The tech industry are big phonies. Take a recent action against Blizzard Gaming by big companies pushing state governments to take action against Blizzard for sex harassment. In fact Blizzard is headquartered in Irvine California away from the big gaming companies in Redmond Washington they just wanted to use the government to get rid of competition not help women as much in the workforce like the claim. The treasurers have asked for a meeting with the board of directors by December 20. This comes after the heads of PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo of America all responded to a report that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick hid knowledge of misconduct.
No kidding! If I see another commercial with Facebooks’s “privacy manager” touting uniform regulations I think I’m gonna puke. As if they care about anything that isn’t in their own self-interest. And then there’s the carefully staged “Whistleblower.” Give me a break already! They really do take us for fools – probably because so many are.
Amen. If we want soldiers to actually fight for our freedoms, it’ll be civil war against the only threat to them: the government and the corporate oligarchy.
Actually it’s because they hate truth because Jesus is truth.
Um, no. Australia is already putting people into camps. Austria announced they will incarcerate the purebloods. The J6 patriots are being starved and beaten to death. You have much to fear.
Yeah, but “we” are not Australia. Yet.
Here’s another victory against Big Tech:
https://share.newsbreak.com/7jd20g15
Here’s the headline: “Facebook reverses Kyle Rittenhouse policy”. They gave up trying to algorythmically censor positive stories about The Kenosha Kid. So they won’t publish “stories that glorify the killing” of the bad guys (and yes, they were bad guys), but they will publish “positive” stories about Kyle. Previously, if you googled “Kyle Rittenhouse” you got nothing but blank pages.
As if there isn’t already plenty of controversies these days in the US and the collective West.
Dead links and missing pages are an unfortunate part of the Internet. I think we’ve all learned to take these things in stride. But what I’ve seen happening just in the past two years is obviously a concerted effort to restrict access to information and to the intelligent analysis of that information.
I remember taking journalism classes in high school. We were taught to be objective and to stick to the facts. I can honestly say what passes for journalism today isn’t up to the standards of any ordinary high school newspaper in the 1970s. It’s absurd.
Then today, there’s this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFFEI60SThU
The United Nations now appears to be actively taking down private websites. The bloody United Nations.
Although the narrator of this particular video isn’t familiar to me (and I have no opinion about him or his advocacy), I think the documents and links he provides is a good beginning-point for delving into this topic further.
It also may explain why one of the best sites I’ve found for carefully curated Covid-related information, including direct links to medical and scientific reports, disappeared last week.
In the past two years, I have lost access to at least a dozen quality sites that provided the reader with independently verifiable sources. To me, these sites had stood the test of time.
It may become a good way to gauge you might be onto something today if the place you found it is gone tomorrow.
Unbeknownst to me, my computer was taken over by a foreign (foreign to me) “administrator.” This individual removed all my malware protection! When I try to download it again, it blocks me because I’m not the administrator. I can’t download anything without its approval. I can’t change anything without its approval.
Ouch Gail, that sounds like a big problem.
What did you eventually do about it? Or, if you haven’t been able to resolve it, can the IT people that assist with your site be of any help at all?
I’d be interested to know what bug/malware/spyware your IT people discover, if any, as well as the steps they recommend you take to prevent it from happening again.
Do you think it may have compromised the website in some way?
I have no IT people! It’s my personal computer. I contacted Malwarebytes. A support person got back to me but he wanted to upload my personal files to him???? I’ve never had a tech ask me to do that. I was just hoping he could reinstall the product, it could do a search, and get rid of the problem.
I was able to look up the administrative user code (interestingly, there are 2) but I don’t have the passwords and without administrator status, I can’t delete them.
I had someone load some protection on my device a year ago and I recently discovered he set up his own little database of stuff. I was furious. No one should be loading stuff onto my computer without my knowledge! He definitely has some boundary issues so I got rid of him (or so I thought).
Maybe I didn’t.
To answer your question, he has some kind of generic credential that ends with “Monomakos”. Not sure if that enables him to get into our site or not.
We’ve had some kind of “parking” notice on our site which is unusual for a website that has been around since 2009. Plus, the site is registered in my name and we don’t sell anything so I’m baffled.
Misha notified us of the problem. The next thing I know, this guy is on the phone asking if I need his help to fix it.
There have been other little things that are off, too. He could be creating these problems thinking I will end up calling him and asking him for help, which will never happen!
Besides George and me, there are only 2 other users on our site. I have changed all 4 of our passwords.
This week I’m going to take this into Best Buy (Geeks) and see what they recommend.
Okay, now I’m hearing you, Gail.
I’m unfortunately the furthest thing from an IT guy. One thing I can tell you is I’ve had my own problems with Malwarebytes. I’ve found it helpful to not overlook a port-blocker for outbound programs. Usually a port-blocker can pinpoint the exact program trying to ‘phone home’ to install more malware, and the port it’s using to download it. You then have the option of blocking it and sometimes deleting the malware. I also like disk encryption. On today’s more powerful computers, you shouldn’t notice any lag in performance.
I avoid B Buy when I’m back in the States for the simple reason that its bounty program was revealed to be far more sweeping and invasive than they let on. It’s the principle of the thing.
Sorry to say, it sounds like you’d be best served by a full reinstallation after a disk wipe, then scan your files on a thumb drive before placing them back on your computer. It’s a lot of work, but diligent and regular housecleaning has its own rewards. Same with whatever you have in the cloud. Run it all through a good anti-malware program and delete whatever gets flagged. Then, download the info again from source. I don’t really know of any online scanning sites (I don’t use them), but people seem to like GRC/Shields Up! for a variety of reasons.
Hope that helps.
This was very helpful. Thank you!
Facebook? Twitter? Never been on any of them, from the very beginning.
In 1999 they put a computer on my desk at my law office. The internet had just reached the masses beyond academia and the like. I had to learn to type at 51; I’d always dodged it; most boys my age hadn’t taken typing in high school, I was married at 19 and my wife typed my undergrad and law school papers where needed (mostly you didn’t have to back then), and then I always had a secretary.
Anyway, when the web and its social media spawn came along, I had been married for 32 years, had been in the practice of law for 26 years,had 5 adult children, and 6 grandchildren.
The point: none of it is necessary to life at all. I keep my own involvement to an absolute minimum. And the reason I stayed away from Facebook from the beginning was that it was proprietary– they own their printing press, and still do.
You are right to do so. I dropped Fakebook three or so years ago. Then last year I took down my Twitter account. Within the past few months, I decided to go back to Twitter, mainly because of Scott Adams and Sebastian Gorka. There is a chance that dissident Rightists can still make life miserable for the Left on that platform.
With Dorsey out, I’d say that Twitter is on the knife’s edge. I know Agrawal is going to try and seal the deal for the Left but for some strange reason, I think he’s going to fail.
Anyway, the glory is in the fight.
They banned me on facebookf for almost a year. So, I use Twitter even though its just as liberal. In fact teh Facebook ban has been almost a year. I can see them banning people for a year but they seem to hold it against you longer than that.
Clausewitz said you can’t defend everything. I will extend this to – you can’t control everything. Consider why someone craves control. These people cannot get enough. Complete control over everything and everyone is impossible. Control becomes an obsession that can never be satisfied. It is a fools folly that eventually consumes itself like an ouroboros.
The process of control bakes in the ingredients of it’s own destruction.
The prudent will do well to stay out of out of range when the manure hits the rotary spreader in spectacular fashion.
Thank you Molon for this succinct exposition. I guess you have verbalized what I have intuited: the Establishment (and this includes its Big Tech division) cannot win –in the end.
That doesn’t mean that they can’t do a lot of damage on their way down however. “Lock and load”. In other words, “put your trust in God and keep your powder dry”.
“Complete control over everything and everyone is impossible.
Control becomes an obsession that can never be satisfied.
It is a fools folly that eventually consumes itself like an ouroboros.”
Indeed. It is Bill’s absolute pinched-sphincter grip of ‘intellectual property rights’, in respect of the poison death shots, that constitutes one of (if not the chief) obstacles to the overwhelming of Africa with Bwana White Man’s Covid Mania.
This gives the ‘natives’ time to notice that hydroxychloroquine works just fine.
“…none of it is necessary to life at all.”
Amen to that!
Maybe some think Facebook, etc. is necessary to life.
I’m not one of them.
Having said that, I think there is a good reason to be there. First, I myself benefit from it because I have not one single Orthodox Christian friend who thinks clearly and has the courage to act on clear thinking about things like Covid 19, masking, getting vaxxed, not voting for Joe Biden, etc.
Not one. I have changed parishes now, mind you, and I know that my current priest thinks clearly about those things, so that’s something. But none of my friends from my previous parish have the sense God gave us to resist the pressure to get vaxxed, for example.
I have accumulated a number of Facebook friends who are courageous Orthodox priests as well as Orthodox lay people who think clearly and who embrace traditional, canonical Orthodoxy and reject ecumenism.
I also hope and believe that there is good that can be done on Facebook; that it is a battleground of sorts; what I consider to be the Areopagus. The public square; a place where ideas can be discussed. Oh yes, it’s more difficult now. I have spent more than my share of time in the FB slammer.
But I think it’s worth it.
Dear George,
I agree. We as Orthodox must be prepared for any eventuality – primarily spiritually (pray harder). Many have put aside provisions and other material things, but you can never prepare enough. The only Truth and purpose in life that matters, is that we are prepared for the Kingdom of Heaven. This constrained reality we live in is only the testing ground and lasts the blink of an eye compared to The Lords eternal life.
We must do our best while we are here for ourselves, our families and our communities in order to pass the tolls and get our “ticket punched” for Paradise.
In my humble opinion, I believe it is wise to take heed of our Lords words in Luke 22:36-38. Some may try to claim that this was just for this specific event, however, I believe that the Lords Word reverberates through all time. This is also something we should prepare for.
I find that many have difficulty wrapping their minds around the fact that they will have to get their hands dirty. I understand this and respect it. However, the decision to take extreme action should not be left until the last moment.
I may have mentioned another time that you do not need any government, Constitution or 2nd amendment for protection. You already have a God given right, obligation and responsibility to protect yourself, your family, your faith and others.
First and most important is to clothe yourself with God’s armor and the confidence that The Lord will guide you with love and mercy to do what is necessary.
My prayer is that I do God’s will – not mine – and not allow my ego and pride to mislead me.
Looks like The Golden Don isn’t going anywhere:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/trump-endorsements-win-137-3-few-parallels-in-history
He’s made 141 endorsements and so far he’s 137-4. He’s the “king of the king-makers”.
As the last line of the story relates, it is his influence on the ideological tenor of Republicans he endorses that is the true measure of his power. There is a war within the Republican Party between the uniparty establishment (UE) and the patriot revolutionaries (PR). The only hope for the country, if there is any hope for the country, is for the patriot revolutionaries to prevail decisively in the primaries and general election next year.
With PR’s firmly in charge of congress, a second Trump administration, or any MAGA administration, could be very powerful and perhaps destroy the Democratic Party in favor of some other party taking their place in the two party system or even succeeding in turning the system into a dominant party one. That has to be the goal – the total destruction of the Democratic Party, root and branch, for the salvation of the republic.
It sounds far fetched and it is far fetched but it, for the first time in our lifetimes, is actually conceivable. This will require Trump and the PR to be much more ruthless than they have shown any proclivity to do in the past. This Beast will not go down without a fight and any temporary victory over it that allows it to survive is a defeat for us and a win for Grendel.
As much as the Republicans disappoint me, the Democrats sink to even lower levels. I guess we’re at the point where they can safely pull off their masks:
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/blumenthal-speaks-at-communist-party-awards-ceremony/
Blumenthal can afford to be a Socialist.
Ordinary people can’t.
File this one under “Incest is Best”:
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/commerce-secretarys-husband-is-top-executive-at-tech-firm-funded-by-chinese-government/
Swamp critters gotta swamp.
Seriously, I’ll stand by my assessment last January that America is now a vassal-state of China.