Alien balloons

Conspiracy Theories are a Product of Freedom

Alien balloonsAt first reading, Instagram’s decision to slap a “false information” label on Jelena Djokovic’s post sharing a 5G coronavirus conspiracy video seems eminently sensible and responsible. After all, the news media is awash with stories of people attacking 5G masts and in some instances even threatening engineers in the belief that there’s some connection between the new communications system and the spread of the coronavirus.

At present there is no credible reason to think that any causal connection exists between a high-frequency communications system and a novel virus variant that attacks the respiratory systems of its victims. I for one am not expecting any such information to emerge any time soon.

Be that as it may, Instagram have made a big mistake in this instance and it’s a decision they will one day come to regret. The social media giants have been under increasing scrutiny over the past couple of years, especially when it comes to their arbitrary and politically motivated decisions to suppress some users while allowing others to continue using their platforms. Facebook has already tied itself in knots trying to explain its decision to remove completely legal posts by some users and not others; and the US Senate is starting to take the matter of online censorship much more seriously.

By deciding to effectively pass a value judgement on Jelena Djokovic’s personal opinion, Instagram has followed Facebook’s lead and started to assume the role of an editor as opposed to that of a neutral platform.

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Viking

The Great Scandinavian Nosedive

VikingEvery once in while, a corporation or institution makes a decision so astonishingly bad that average people wonder just how a bunch of high-powered and highly paid executives can be so monumentally stupid. These “teachable moments” used to come along once every decade or so, but now they seem to be happening every other week.

The latest catastrophe has been the instant backlash provoked by Scandinavian Air’s spectacularly ill judged marketing strategy of deriding Scandinavian culture as somehow fraudulent or not real, while at the same time encouraging customers to engage in yet more of the same cultural appropriation they’ve just been belittled for.

Now Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) are shocked to discover that the general public are not altogether happy with being told that almost every part of their cultural identity is somehow invalid, which is pretty much the same thing as denying that a huge part of them even exists in any meaningful sense. Not only is this obvious nonsense, but it’s just one more wearying example of the cultural and anthropological bigotry which has become a disturbingly acceptable part of media discourse in recent years. Boiled down, this pernicious form of psychological self-flagellation holds that pretty much everything in Western societies (and especially the Anglosphere) is somehow stolen from some other society and is therefore not real or worthy of respect.

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David Berlinski

David Berlinski – Modern Heretic

David BerlinskiIt’s only fitting that I dedicate my 100th blog post to the great David Berlinski; mathematician, writer, polymath and probably the single most dangerous heretic alive today.

With a fiercely talented and mathematically trained mind, Berlinski has become the scourge of establishment academics as he questions the most basic assumptions upon which disciplines such as physics and evolutionary biology currently rest. The reason he is such a threat to the status quo is that he identifies and calls out the articles of scientific faith which are cunningly disguised as settled facts…plus he’s just a lot smarter than they are.

Perhaps being the child of Holocaust refugees has something to do with Berlinski’s uncanny ability to sniff out patterns of thought and systems of belief that masquerade as established scientific principles, despite their being nothing of the kind. Probably the best example of this surgical separation of what we know from what we think can be found in The Devil’s Delusion, Berlinski’s masterful deconstruction of “scientific” atheism. As a secular Jew, Berlinski doesn’t argue for or against the existence of any First Cause or Creator; instead he merely exposes the many, many questions left unanswered by astrophysics and evolutionary biology by deflating their claims to know an awful lot more than they actually do.

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayann Hirsi Ali – Modern Heretic

Ayaan Hirsi AliIf ever there was a walking, talking exemplar of courage today, then surely that description befits Somali born Ayann Hirsi Ali.

As a victim of female genital mutilation and a former Islamist sympathiser, Hirsi Ali has dared to incur the wrath of both Islamists and their many apologists as she fearlessly calls out the breathtaking double standards of mainstream Western politics. Hounded by both those outside the law as well as those who make it, she has fearlessly campaigned for the reform of Islamic doctrine, particularly in relation to the issue of women’s rights. She is also a thorn in the side of feminist grievance culture as she constantly calls out their hysterical denunciation of an incorrect word or an advertising campaign, while highlighting their hypocritical silence when it comes to women’s rights in Islamic communities.

Fleeing to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage, Hirsi Ali has lived under constant threat of violence from one source or another for the better part of twenty years. That threat became all too real when her colleague Theo Van Gogh was murdered in 2004. Hirsi Ali had written the script for his controversial film entitled Submission (2004), which is a short but hard hitting critique of the condition of women in Islamic societies.

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Test card

Guerrilla Politics 101

Test cardThe future has already arrived, although few people seem to have noticed.

Despite what many pundits are writing in the popular press, the publication of Boris Johnson’s much discussed letter to Donald Tusk is much more than some bombastically blonde breed of megaphone diplomacy. The story behind its appearance is much bigger and its roots run far deeper.

When viewed alongside Donald Trump’s lively Twitter feed and Matteo Salvini’s Facebook livestreams, Johnson’s letter and his recent People’s PMQs are part of a newly emerging normality.

Welcome to the new guerilla politics!

With the BBC being caught out for its blatant dishonesty during the European Elections and details of the former Chancellor’s Brexit sabotage still emerging, Johnson knows he can’t trust the mainstream media or the Civil Service to represent his views or interpret his instructions objectively. As a result he is one of an increasing number of politicians taking to the internet and engaging directly with the electorate to bypass the selective filters and increasingly obvious agenda of the corporate media sector. It also affords politicians of all stripes the chance to fight back with some long overdue criticism of the mainstream media machine. The bus hiding behind Johnson’s shoulder during PPMQs is my personal favourite.

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