- Only speech consistent with official pronouncements furthers society
- All else is rumor, error and lies — and will be punished.
- State issued speech credits and Star Chamber proceedings
- Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out (masthead of Front Page Magazine)
From Jacob Bojesson writing at The Daily Caller (excerpts)
An Inside Look At China’s Move To Control Social Behavior
The Internet has become a tool for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to keep its citizens in place. Through the web, the government surveils their every move and puts them behind bars if their online behavior is not in line with Beijing’s sentiment.
Recently, Chinese officials began developing a social credit system in which the government keeps what amounts to an Internet credibility score on each citizen. Experts discussed the system during the ongoing China Forum in Washington, D.C., which they say reveals a real-world 1984-style totalitarian state in the making.
“It will mark the rival of an unprecedented information totalitarianism,” said Cao Yaxue, a Chinese writer and renown critic of CCP. “It’s issuing a driver’s license for speech. You will be subjected to point deduction for violation of speech. Once you have no points left, you will be barred from going on the road again.”
As the name implies, the system holds a score on every citizen and business based on their social behavior. The things you buy and people you socialize with are subject for review. Every word typed and posted on the Internet will decide whether a person is “raising the honest mentality and credit levels of the entire society.”
Based on how these behaviors are in-sync with the beliefs of the CCP, a person’s score will go up and down. The credit rating is directly related to a person’s access to social services, such as education and health care. When a person runs out of points all together, they will no longer be allowed to leave their homes.
The CCP has not been silent about the new system and takes pride in “strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society,” as described in the law that passed last summer.
“Accelerating the construction of a social credit system is an important basis for comprehensively implementing the scientific development view and building a harmonious Socialist society,” an excerpt of the law reads. “It is an important method to perfect the Socialist market economy system, accelerating and innovating social governance, and it has an important significance for strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society.”
The database that keeps the scores will gradually be developed over the next five years. A series of laws to restrict freedom of speech has been passed over the past years to prevent espionage and foreign NGOs from operating freely.
“In the last three years systematic measures were taken to smother what they conceive threats and challenges,” Yaxue said. “Up to 300 human rights lawyers were questioned and they now remain in secret detention without the right of access to lawyers.”
Amendment Act 9 passed this week, making rumor-spreading a criminal offense punishable with three years in prison. Any statement that doesn’t come from the state-run newspapers or television stations will be considered a rumor, according to Yaxue.
From Robert Tracinski writing at The Federalist (excerpt)
The Climate Change Inquisition Begins
New York’s Attorney general is sending out the message that corporations who fund climate change skeptics will face political reprisal.
New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, has started an investigation of Exxon Mobil “to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how such risks might hurt the oil business.” According to The New York Times, its sources “said the inquiry would include a period of at least a decade during which Exxon Mobil funded outside groups that sought to undermine climate science.” . . .
. . . The arguments for global warming have been undercut — not by anything Exxon did — but by what the earth didn’t do. It didn’t keep warming, with global temperatures leveling off for the past 15 to 20 years. Global temperatures are now trending at or below the lowest, least dire predictions of warming.
But this isn’t really about the science, is it? To make it clear that this is entirely a political witch hunt, the Times explains that “the company published extensive research over decades that largely lined up with mainstream climatology. Thus, any potential fraud prosecution might depend on exactly how big a role company executives can be shown to have played in directing campaigns of climate denial, usually by libertarian-leaning political groups.”
New York’s attorney general is using securities law to evade the First Amendment.
Voila! Consensus!
A Bloomberg analysis describes the “weird theory” needed to transform this into a case of securities fraud but gets down to the nub of why Schneiderman is pursuing that theory: to evade the First Amendment. “[S]ecurities fraud is perhaps the least protected speech of all. Securities law fits notoriously uncomfortably with the First Amendment; the Securities and Exchange Commission forbids even truthful speech by companies in many situations.”
So there you go. This is about suppressing political speech by using the threat of government prosecution to intimidate corporations into withdrawing funding from pro-free-market advocates. . . .
More reading here:
Climate Change Deniers Are As Bad As Hitler’. Yale History Professor Goes Full Godwin
Punishing Climate Change Deniers
Progressive Professor Demands Death Penalty for Global Warming Skeptics and the Pope
Gore goes off the deep end, calls to ‘Punish Climate-Change Deniers’
20 professors & scientists sign letter asking Obama to prosecute climate-change skeptics
R Mall
