Category Archives: ethics

More Censorship

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Meta, the owner of Facebook, is expanding its censorship practice.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, said Monday that they will be taking down posts that support the raids of Brazilian government buildings by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

And it was preplanned:

“In advance of the election, we designated Brazil as a temporary high-risk location and have been removing content calling for people to take up arms or forcibly invade Congress, the Presidential palace and other federal buildings,” a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement reported by Reuters.
“We are also designating this as a violating event, which means we will remove content that supports or praises these actions,” the statement continued. “We are actively following the situation and will continue removing content that violates our policies.

All because Mark Zuckerberg disapproves of opinions different from his own. And he’s proud of his censorship.

The correct answer to distasteful, even despicable, rhetoric—Facebook posts or otherwise—is answering rhetoric that makes the differing case. Merely censoring, deleting, canceling rhetoric is either laziness or cowardice. Or both.

He’s Right

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Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov says it’s…silly (my term)…to negotiate with the Russian barbarians while they’re still inside Ukraine.

“There’s no way to have conversations with them; you can’t talk with terrorists,”…citing Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure during a brutal winter. The war will not end, he continued, until the Ukrainian forces “turn everything back—all the territories.”

And

“Everything will be linked once again, including Crimea,” Danilov said. “Not one meter will be left for the taking of the enemy.”

Indeed. How is it even possible to negotiate with an entity whose first and only goal is the utter dissolution of your nation?

Readers of this blog know the peace terms I’ve been advocating for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to require.

No Speaker of the House

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The Wall Street Journal had a brief blurb on what to expect from the House of Representatives while it has no Speaker.

With no speaker, the House is at a standstill. The members have not been sworn-in, meaning there technically isn’t a House of Representatives in the country right now. Committees can’t be organized and they can’t vote on legislation.

That last bit—no legislation—is key for me. With the House unable to vote on legislation, so long as there’s no Speaker, that means the Federal debt ceiling can’t be raised, taxes can’t be raised, and spending can’t be increased. Ultimately (later rather than sooner) the Federal government would be forced to vastly curtail operations. Curtail, not close as so many sensationalist journalists and in-office politicians so loudly bleat, because existing taxes would continue to be collected, and existing spending programs would continue to spend.

For me, that lack of legislation is a major plus; although it would be useful were the Idiot Five to get out of the way so a Speaker could be chosen, and the Republican-led House set about returning to Republican roots and reduce tax rates, reallocate (tightly controlled and reduced) spending away from current welfare cages and toward securing our border, supporting Ukraine seriously against the barbarian invasion, (re)arming the Republic of China, greatly reducing Federal regulations.

Some European Questions

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In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the supposed unity of Europe against Russian President Putin and Europe’s dependency on the US in countering Putin, there were these questions the men and women of Europe’s governments have—especially in the face of Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden’s waffling on military and economic aid to Ukraine and his slow-walking that military aid.

  1. How much firepower should Ukraine receive in its quest to retake occupied territory from Russia’s invasion forces?
  2. How much Western weaponry would risk an uncontrolled escalation of the war?
  3. And what sort of compromises should Ukraine contemplate if it can’t drive Russian troops off its land entirely?

As might be expected, I have answers.

  1. All that the Ukrainian military needs, of the type they say they need (most assuredly not the type the Know Betters of the Pentagon say they need), and as fast as they can absorb it.
  2. Quit worrying about it. The barbarian’s conventional forces are in no position to escalate—or widen—anything, and even the barbarian chieftain understands that going nuclear, even if only tactical, will bring about the destruction of Russia and more importantly to the chieftain, his personal destruction.
  3. See 1 above. Zelenskyy has been quite clear about this, the pretended confusion of the Western press notwithstanding. The barbarian’s departure from Ukraine is a prerequisite to peace negotiation.

Concerning that last, I’ve written before that border negotiations must begin with, and the only border-related compromise permissible is, how far back from the Ukraine border Russian roads and railroads must be torn up and the terrain (re)sown with Russian olive trees.

Some Biden Admin Officials are Correct

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I’ve written about the dangers of TikTok to American children’s safety and to US security before. For two years, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US has been dickering with TikTok about ways to wall the app off from the government of the People’s Republic of China as a criterion for TikTok’s continued operation in the US.

Of course, a wall-off has no hope of success: its owner, ByteDance, would remain a PRC company and so wholly responsible to the PRC government’s intelligence community to commit espionage on demand. With TikTok still owned by ByteDance, any firewall must necessarily fail in the face of any PRC intel demand.

As a result of that, some members of CFIUS, in particular, DoD and DoJ folks, are becoming more interested in requiring TikTok be spun off by ByteDance into a separate entity. It’s an interesting idea; although I wonder about remaining sub rosa connections in the form of ByteDance-affiliated persons remaining in TikTok’s management structure, along with the risk of allegedly ex-ByteDance persons still in TikTok’s management.

Treasury has its own concerns regarding a forced sale.

[T]he Treasury Department, which chairs the panel [CFIUS], is worried that such an order might be overturned in court, and is looking for other possible solutions, according to a person familiar with that department’s thinking.

Treasury’s concern is easily enough preempted, along with my concern about ByteDance-related persons in TikTok employ: ban TikTok altogether from the US.