Despite only until recently having no military to speak of at all based on post-WWII disarmament, Japan’s defense ministry is hinting that it could soon equip its submarines with long range missiles, regional media reported Monday.

Japan’s armed forces are “considering acquiring the capability to launch long-range missiles from submarines as a way to mount a counter-strike against foreign threats,” Nikkei reported.

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK referenced considerations for the acquirement of the iconic Tomahawk cruise missile in partnership with the US. If it goes through, the new platform would be deployable by some point in the 2030s. 

The news comes after in the last couple years Tokyo acknowledged it is studying ways to enhance deterrence. In 2021, for example, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated:

 “In order to protect the lives and livelihood of our citizens, we will examine all options, including so-called enemy base strike capability in a realistic manner without ruling out any options. We will fundamentally strengthen our defense capabilities with an accelerated pace.”

Earlier reports also said that ships and fighter jets will be included as key platforms from which to launch longer range missiles. 

Maritime and arms monitoring site Naval News describes based on the reports, “the reason why the Japanese government is considering the purchase of Tomahawk is that it cannot wait to deploy domestically produced long-range cruise missiles in the face of recent heightened security threats.”

China in particular has of late been seen as challenging Japan’s maritime territory and sovereignty over disputed islands. Japan has also recently become more vocally supportive of the United States’ stance on the Taiwan issue. 

“The Japanese Ministry of Defense (MoD) is currently in the process of extending the range of the Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles deployed by the Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF), from the current 200 km to a maximum of 1,200 km,” the Naval News report explains. Japanese media has revealed that submarines are now being seriously considered as among the list of options.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

A Gallup poll has found that fewer than a third of Americans remain worried about COVID.

“Twenty-eight percent of Americans say they are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat worried’ they will get COVID — the lowest percentage Gallup has recorded since the summer of 2021,” the pollster notes.

The survey also found that 78% believe the pandemic to be “over,” a new high, with most people saying that everyone should “lead their normal lives as much as possible and avoid interruptions to work and business.”

Gallup further notes that “The same poll finds the smallest percentages of Americans yet reporting they are steering clear of specific situations because of the coronavirus, including avoiding large crowds (24%), avoiding travel by plane or public transportation (19%), avoiding going to public places (16%) and avoiding small gatherings (13%).”

“Use of face masks remains fairly common, but the 40% saying they have worn one in the past week when outside their home is also a new low during the pandemic,” the pollster adds.

Most Americans are not bothering with social distancing anymore either, according to the poll.

“About six in 10 Americans (59%) say they have made no attempt to isolate themselves from people outside their household in the past 24 hours — the most eschewing social distancing since the beginning of the pandemic,” Gallup explains.

“Sixteen percent, similar to the level in April, now say they have completely or mostly isolated themselves from people outside their household, while 25% — the lowest reading since April 2020 — say they have isolated themselves partially or a little,” the report further notes.

Despite the findings, along with all the recent revelations about vaccines and vaccine mandates, globalist technocrats appear to be planning to bring back vaccine passports for the “next pandemic.”

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in The Hill on what is shaping up to be a major Supreme Court term on the issues of parody and satire under the First Amendment. The Court could reframe the constitutional limits for criminal and civil liability in two cases currently on the docket, including one recently granted review. Here is the column:

The court system often is where humor goes to die. For those seeking to use satire or parody of corporations, jokes often run into trademark or other lawsuits and result in a little more than “ha, ha, thump.”

The same bad audience could await the defendant in Jack Daniel’s Properties Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. The Supreme Court just accepted a case involving a tongue-in-cheek dog chew toy made to resemble a Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle. VIP prevailed in defending the toy as protected speech, but the distiller wants the Supreme Court to declare such parodies to be trademark violations.

The docket this term is actually a hoot of parody cases.

Another pending case is Novak v. City of Parma, in which Anthony Novak was prosecuted for posting a parody of the website of his local police department. He was charged with (and later acquitted of) a felony under an Ohio law prohibiting the use of a computer to “disrupt” or “interrupt” police functions.

The satirical site, The Onion, has filed a brilliant parody brief to support the right to parody. The Onion regularly publishes funny fake news stories and, true to form, filed a brief as the self-described “world’s leading news publication” offering “universally revered coverage,” and noting it is the “single most powerful and influential organization in human history.” It told the court that its “more than 350,000 full- and part-time” staff members are renowned for “maintaining a towering standard of excellence” in journalism. (It added that it “owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.”) It was a tour-de-force on the value of satire to make profound legal and political points.

Image from Supreme Court Petition

The court has yet to decide whether to take the Novak case, but it has accepted the Jack Daniel’s case. The distiller sued VIP over its introduction of the Silly Squeakers “Bad Spaniels” rubber squeaky toy. The toy is shaped like a whiskey bottle with a cartoon spaniel on the front and the caption: “Bad Spaniels, the Old No. 2, on your Tennessee Carpet.” On the back is a small disclaimer reading: “This product is not affiliated with Jack Daniel’s Distillery.”

That clearly was not enough for the distillery, which argued that people would be confused by the parody. While the district court originally ruled with Jack Daniel’s, it was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The chew toy was ruled (correctly, in my mind) to involve “new expressive content” and to be protected under the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court has recognized that satire and parody have long played a key role in political discourse stretching back to ancient Greece. In 1988, the court handed down the important free-speech decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, holding that an offensive cartoon of Rev. Jerry Falwell was protected under the First Amendment from civil liability.

A chew toy is obviously not the type of “slashing and one-sided” political commentary which the court found in the Hustler case.

However, the distiller is advancing a claim that would chill the use of any common image in a parody or satire, even though no reasonable person would confuse the products.

At issue is the Ninth Circuit’s highly protective free-speech test for trademark claims where a company argues that a product “tarnishes” its image. The Ninth Circuit has held that the “referential and cultural icon requirements” just have to be “above zero” to be protected under the First Amendment.

The district court originally objected that, once a court finds that a parody is protected speech, companies have little ability to overcome free-speech objections. It found that the Bad Spaniels toy was not an artistic or expressive work and was not entitled to protection under the First Amendment. But the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded, finding it to be expressive speech protected by the First Amendment.

On remand, the district court found that standard was made because, as it said, “A parody functions just like a mash-up. It modifies and plays with the elements of an original work to express something new and different.” Three other circuits have rejected this approach. Yet, in the absence of congressional action (which is unlikely, given the power of corporate lobbies), the Ninth Circuit offers greater clarity and space for free expression.

Parody and satire also face threats from other legal actions, particularly tort actions over the appropriation of names or likenesses (called the right to publicity). The courts, including the Ninth Circuit, have made a distinctly unfunny mess of such cases. Past tort cases generally have favored celebrities and resulted in rulings like White v. Samsung, a perfectly ludicrous ruling in which Vanna White successfully sued over the use of a robot with a blonde wig turning cards as the appropriation of her name or likeness. It appears no blonde being — robotic or human — may turn cards on a fake game show.

The court’s term could prove to be the most important docket on parody and satire in decades. It may prove less protective on trademark actions (like Jack Daniel’s) than criminal matters (like Novak). However, this involves more than a canine chew toy — it will impact a wide range of creative expression using common cultural images or references.

This dog toy was an obvious parody and expressly included a disclaimer of any connection to the distillery; it neither confuses consumers nor tarnishes the Jack Daniel’s trademark.

A lack of sense of humor, not a lack of sufficient clarity, drove this litigation – but make no mistake: If this little chew toy is found to be a trademark violation, the court may take a big bite out of the First Amendment.

California’s participation in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2022 peaked at 4.9 million people as of July (and then dropped to 4.6 million in August). That was higher than California’s previous highest food stamp participation of 4.8 million people in June 2020.

What is more confusing is that the last time food stamp participation was this high, the Golden State’s unemployment rate was over 16%. Currently, it is at 3.8% – the lowest level since at least 1976.

As JustTheNews.com reports, California has approved funding in the 2022-23 budget to allow undocumented immigrants ages 55 and over to get food assistance under the state-funded California Food Assistance Program, which is separate from the federally-funded SNAP program.

California has given extra SNAP money to recipients due to COVID-19.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October that the COVID-19 state of emergency would end Feb. 28, 2023.

The per-person cost of the SNAP program has increased from $123.22 per month in March 2020 before the state of emergency declaration to $277.12 as of August 2022.

That $277.12 August 2022 benefit is the state’s highest ever for the federal SNAP program.

Perhaps what is even more interesting about the latest slew of state-based data is that the number of individuals receiving food stamps in Tennessee has dropped to the lowest levels since November 2003.

Gov. Bill Lee did not renew a COVID-19 state of emergency in November 2021, which had been in effect for 20 months. Additional emergency SNAP benefits authorized by the federal government ended Dec. 31. The SNAP benefits cost per person was $256.66 in December and dropped in January to $166.82.

The state’s unemployment rate during the pandemic peaked at 15.9% in April 2020 and dropped to 3.4% as of September 2022.

Lee also signed a law that took effect in May that added a work requirement to receive food assistance.

Can you spot the difference?

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

The Washington Post advised Americans Sunday that instead of a traditional season dinner, which now is unaffordable for a quarter of families, they should instead look to eating bugs.

Yes really.

In an article headlined Salted ants. Ground crickets. Why you should try edible insects, the Post stated “Consumers can already find foods like salted ants on Amazon and cricket powder protein bars in Swiss grocery stores.”

Yummmmm, ants.

The piece quoted a six year old girl in Pennsylvania who was supposedly given a rousing ovation by onlookers for eating fried worms.

The piece states “It’s not that bad!” she exclaimed. “It kind of tastes like kettle corn!”

There’s the usual crap about crickets having more protein than beef and everyone in third world countries already eating them, so why are you any better… etc

“Watching others enjoy insects may also help break down barriers,” the piece states under a sub headline “Creating a new norm.”

It further states “before insects can become common fare, more diners must be convinced that six-legged critters are, in fact, food. Through tasting experiments, surveys and educational demos, researchers, entrepreneurs and educators are delving into consumers’ psychology and finding that resistance to insect-eating can be strong.”

You don’t say.

We’re not eating fucking bugs.

This is the latest in a growing trend of pushing bug eating on the masses as a way of ‘saving the planet’.

A major supermarket chain in the UK is finalising plans to stock insects on its shelves and market them as a cheap food source for people struggling to afford to feed their families amid soaring inflation and the cost of living crisis.

The Daily Mail reported recently that Aldi is considering stocking ‘edible’ bugs and providing recipe kits for parents to prepare worms and crickets for their hungry children.

Potential products in the range include ‘sustainable’ cricket burgers, as well as ‘nuggets’ and ‘mince’.

You will eat the bugs. You will own nothing. And you will be happy. pic.twitter.com/6Pkj5Ol4Td

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 20, 2022

Just when you thought this couldn’t get any more more dystopian, the supermarket is involved with a TV game show in which insect ‘farmers’ will pitch the bugs as the ‘next big thing’ for Aldi, according to the report.

Recently, Canadian company The Aspire Food Group pledged to produce 9000 tons of insects per year for human and pet consumption after completing construction of the world’s biggest cricket food processing centre.

In addition to crickets, worms and maggots are also big in Europe.

There are even proposals to feed them to school kids:

How about a weed side salad? And why not wash down your worm food with a tall refreshing glass of sewage?

in 2020, the World Economic Forum published two articles on its website which explored how people could be conditioned to get used to the idea of eating weeds, bugs and drinking sewage water in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

A separate article published on the WEF website outlined how people can be conditioned to enjoy consuming ‘food’ which on the surface sounds disgusting.

The ‘Great Reset’ is about enacting a drastic reduction in living standards for the plebs which will force them to put bugs, weeds and sewage on the menu while the Davos elites continue to feast on the finest cuisine in their ivory towers.

*  *  *

Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

While fashion company Balenciaga has filed a $25 million lawsuit against the producers of an ad which featured pedophilic images that included BDSM teddy bears and other disturbing imagery, internet sleuths have homed in one of the company’s in-house stylists, Lotta Volkova, who has a disturbing social media history which was recently made private.

Born in 1984, the Russian-born Volkova – who also designs for Adidas, was described by Vogue as a “super stylist.” But she’s also super into disturbing images of satanism, children in distress, and teddy bears in bondage, based on her now-private Instagram feed, as noted by The Namal, citing a lengthy Twitter thread by internet sleuth @curioslight.

T/W: These are shocking posts from Balenciagas stylist Lotta Volkova who has a sick obsession with torture, satan & child Mutilation

These pics are beyond shocking but there are far worse on her Instagram which I won’t share

Notice a common theme with the brand now? #balenciaga pic.twitter.com/Wet0kKf5p8

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) November 27, 2022

To dive into the rabbit hole, click on the tweet below.

A thread on WHO is REALLY behind the #Balenciaga ads:

The Devil In Disguise: Lotta Volkova

1. She has been one of the main stylist in Balenciaga since 2014.
2.She has a relationship with an accused pedophile.
3. We can’t only boycott #Balenciaga but also the people behind it. pic.twitter.com/RjDYU283wj

— curioslight (@curioslight) November 27, 2022

Following outrage over the Balenciaga ad, Kim Kardashian issued a statement condemning the “disturbing images” – which notably came out after @curiouslight’s thread. Did she see it and decide to reevaluate her relationship with the company?

Meanwhile, people are still dissecting the original Balenciaga ad…

What does that mean

— ale (@delalunearva) November 23, 2022

Baal is a Canaanite deity who kids were ritualistically sacrificed too pic.twitter.com/yVRocMH6MV

— Vade 𓁼 (@pope_head) November 23, 2022

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via Substack,

It was easy to predict that there would be an all-out war from Western power centers if Musk sought to mildly reduce censorship on Twitter. Still, the media outdid itself…

It is hard to overstate how manic, primal and unhinged is the reaction of corporate media employees to the mere prospect that new Twitter owner Elon Musk may restore a modicum of greater free speech to that platform. It was easy to predict — back when Musk was merely toying with the idea of buying Twitter and loosening some of its censorship restrictions — that there would be an all-out attack from Western power centers if he tried. Online censorship has become one of the most potent propaganda weapons they possess, and there is no way they will allow anyone to dilute it even mildly without attempting to destroy them. Even with that expectation in place of what was to come, the liberal sector of the corporate media (by far the most dominant media sector) really outdid itself when it came to group-think panic, rhetorical excess, and reckless and shrill accusations.

In unison, these media outlets decreed that not only would greater free speech on Twitter usher in the usual parade of horribles they trot out when demanding censorship — disinformation, hate speech, attacks on the “marginalized,” etc. etc. — but this time they severely escalated their rhetorical hysteria by claiming that Musk would literally cause mass murder by permitting a broader range of political opinion to be aired. The Washington Post‘s Taylor Lorenz even warned of supernatural demons that would be unleashed by these new free speech policies, as she talked to a handful of obviously neurotic pro-censorship “experts” and then wrote about these thinly disguised therapy sessions with those neurotics under this headline: “‘Opening the gates of hell’: Musk says he will revive banned accounts.”

But the self-evident absurdity of this laughable meltdown and the ease of mocking it should not obscure that there are lurking within these episodes some genuinely insidious and serious dangers. These preposterous media employees are just the sideshow. But what they are doing, unwittingly or otherwise, is laying the groundwork for far less frivolous and more serious people to use the attacks on Musk to further fortify the regime of censorship they have been constructing: the limitlessly demonizing language heaped on him, the success they have already had in driving away many if not most corporate advertisers from Twitter, the threats to once again abuse the monopoly power of Google and Apple to destroy Twitter or at least cripple it if Musk does not comply with their censorship orders (as they succeeded in doing last year to the free speech site Parler when it became the most-downloaded app in the country and refused to censor on demand).

To examine the media tactics being invoked, and to highlight the underlying conflicts among power centers at stake in this battle, we devoted our monologue to this topic as part of Friday night’s episode of the pre-launch test-runs we are airing of our new live SYSTEM UPDATE program, soon to debut nightly on Rumble. As we explained last week, these test-run episodes are designed to air for now solely on the Locals platform, and are available for now exclusively to our Substack and Locals subscribers, in order to elicit feedback and help us perfect the show as we prepare for our debut on Rumble. The audience feedback we received after our first episode and the first interactive after-show we did was genuinely helpful, and we spent the week incorporating many of our audience’s suggestions in order to elevate the quality of our program as we head toward our launch.

But given the timeliness of our latest monologue to these still-unfolding events, as well as the fact that we were able to keep the test-run glitches to a minimum, we have posted this new full thirty-minute monologue on Rumble, for anyone to watch here. Reflecting the success we believe we can achieve in reaching a large new audience with our program, the number of viewers we attracted to that test-run show before the first full day has already exceeded 100,000: on a Saturday, over Thanksgiving weekend.

As we always have done and will continue to do with all video broadcasts and video reporting we do, we have created and are posting a full transcript of the monologue for subscribers only, available below, for those who prefer to read rather than watch (though we do believe that the video component of the show allows us to use another dimension in conveying our reporting, one of the main reasons we committed to produce this new live program on Rumble). But for those who prefer to read, the transcript of our Musk analysis is below; those wishing to watch our new SYSTEM UPDATE monologue can do so by clicking this link and then watch the video on Rumble.

Subscribers can read more here…

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Twitter owner Elon Musk said Monday that the platform suffers from a “ridiculous” number of professional psychological operations (or, “psy ops”), a concept that typically refers to the dissemination of propaganda or, when used by state actors like the military, psychological warfare tactics meant to manipulate one’s enemies.

“The amount of pro psy ops on Twitter is ridiculous!” Musk wrote in a post on Twitter.

He added jokingly that “at least with new Verified, they will pay $8 for the privilege—haha.”

Musk later qualified his statement, responding to a Twitter user’s comment that the psychological operations are “mid”-level rather than professional. Musk conceded that “it’s mostly basic.”

While it’s not clear what, specifically, Musk was referring to in his post on the prevalence of “pro psy ops,” Twitter has, in the past, struggled to deal with foreign state-linked information operations on the platform, including activity it has deemed malicious.

‘Foreign Interference in Political Conversations’

In 2018, Twitter stated in a blog post that it had identified thousands of accounts that made more than 10 million tweets associated with “foreign interference in political conversations” on the platform.

“It is clear that information operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior will not cease. These types of tactics have been around for far longer than Twitter has existed—they will adapt and change as the geopolitical terrain evolves worldwide and as new technologies emerge,” the company said at the time.

Later, in December 2021, Twitter announced it had removed more than 3,000 accounts that were operating as foreign state-linked information operations, including from China, Russia, and Venezuela.

Twitter said that, in most cases, the accounts were suspended for various violations of its platform manipulation and spam policies, which include prohibitions against using Twitter in ways that “artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience” on the platform.

Prohibited actions include artificially inflating followers or engagement by, for instance, buying “likes” or coordinating to exchange “follows,” in what’s known as “reciprocal inflation.”

‘Widely Diverse Viewpoints’

The company also said it would launch the Twitter Moderation Research Consortium (TMRC), a program that lets outside researchers tap into Twitter data to study trends and study platform governance issues.

While there have been questions about the fate of the research consortium since Musk took over Twitter in late October, he later announced he was ordering the establishment of a “content moderation council” that would represent “widely diverse viewpoints.”

Musk, who has labeled himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” has vowed to make the platform more welcoming to various viewpoints while insisting he wouldn’t allow it to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

At the time, former President Donald Trump praised Musk for succeeding with his takeover bid of Twitter and praised the tech mogul’s moves to open Twitter up to diverse views.

“I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” Trump said in post on Truth Social, though he indicated that he might not return to Twitter even if Musk were to reinstate his account, which at the time was suspended.

Musk has since restored Trump’s account on Twitter, along with a series of other banned accounts, including that of satirical site Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson, a controversial professor of psychology.

Trump hasn’t posted anything on Twitter since his account was reinstated, with his last post being from Jan. 8, 2021, when the former president said he wouldn’t be going to the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden.

Musk said recently he’s “fine” with Trump not posting on Twitter, adding that the social media giant had made a “grave mistake” when it banned the former president from the platform.

“Deplatforming a sitting president undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America,” Musk said.

Since Musk took over Twitter, he has vowed to reduce the number of bots on the platform and curb inauthentic activity.

Twitter paused its recently announced $8 verified blue check subscription service after a wave of blue check accounts appeared on the platform, impersonating big brands and making embarrassing posts.

Musk said recently that the verified check service would be returning on Dec. 2, adding that Twitter would also be rolling out gold and gray checks in addition to blue ones, and that all verified marks would be manually authenticated.

Three months ago, the World Health Organization – in all its ‘expertise’ – decided to prioritize resources in seeking the public’s help in renaming Monkeypox, as “part of an ongoing effort to discourage harmful misconceptions associated with the current name.” The renaming effort followed “demands from international scientists” and “public health officials” who have claimed that the current name encourages a harmful stigma.

We’re calling on @WHO to act immediately to rename the “monkeypox” virus. We have a growing concern for the potentially stigmatizing effects that the messaging around the “monkeypox” virus can have on vulnerable communities. Read our letter: https://t.co/hC6L8o60TH pic.twitter.com/G8CQ9ueaMJ

— Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD (@NYCHealthCommr) July 26, 2022

And today, its official, WHO has renamed Monkeypox to (drum roll please)… mpox.

Both the monkeypox and mpox names will be used by WHO over the next year as the term “monkeypox” is gradually phased out, WHO said in a press release.

“When the outbreak of monkeypox expanded earlier this year, racist and stigmatizing language online, in other settings and in some communities was observed and reported to WHO,” the press release stated.

As the WHO explains:

Human monkeypox was given its name in 1970 (after the virus that causes the disease was discovered in captive monkeys in 1958), before the publication of WHO best practices in naming diseases, published in 2015. According to these best practices, new disease names should be given with the aim to minimize unnecessary negative impact of names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.

Last month WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said monkeypox had seen “a promising decline globally. The number of reported cases has dropped for eight straight weeks. This is very encouraging.”

Mpox? We assume ‘poo flu’, ‘hump bumps’, or ‘pride pustules’ weren’t acceptable?

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) recently got in touch with his inner mobster and threatened Elon Musk – the new owner of Twitter and the CEO of electric car company Tesla and space ventures company SpaceX. He told Musk, “Fix your companies” or “Congress will.”

As part of this threat, Markey referred to an ongoing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into Tesla’s autopilot driving system and Twitter’s 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Markey has done more than make threats: He is one of a group of Democratic senators who wrote to the FTC urging an investigation into whether Musk’s actions as the new owner of Twitter violated the consent decree or consumer protection laws. Since FTC Chair Lina Khan wants to investigate as many businesses as possible, it is likely she will respond favorably to the senators’ letter.

President Biden has also endorsed an investigation into the role foreign investors played in financing Musk’s Twitter purchase. Biden may be concerned that Musk is not likely to ban tweets regarding Hunter Biden’s business deals.

Concerns that Musk would allow tweets containing information embarrassing (or worse) to the Biden administration point to the real reason many Democratic politicians and progressive writers and activists are attacking Musk. They support efforts to suppress conservative, libertarian, and other “non-woke” speech on social media. They view the prospect of a major platform refusing to silence those who dissent from the woke mob or the Democratic Party establishment as a threat to their power. Musk further angered the left by committing what, to many Democrats (and Liz Cheney), is the ultimate hate crime — allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter.

The threat against Musk shows the threat to liberty is not just from big tech; it is from the alliance between big tech and big government.

Some conservatives think that increasing government’s power over social media is the correct way to make big tech respect free speech.

However, increasing the US government’s power over social media can just end up putting more power behind government threats like those from Rep. Markey. Expanded government control over how social media companies conduct their business can also further incentivize the companies to work with the federal government to shut down free speech.

Once the government steps in with increased regulation, the risk is that greater government control over what is communicated on social media will follow. The question will just be who is calling the shots on the exercise of that control. Will the result be an increase of the liberal or “woke” pressure on social media companies to silence conservatives, libertarians, opponents of teaching critical race theory and transgenderism in schools, and those who question the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines? Alternatively, will a new sort of pressure become dominant, maybe pressure to comply with conservative or Republican preferred limits on speech? Either way, liberty loses.

Big tech companies silence their users to curry favor with politicians and bureaucrats, often after “encouragement” from politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, to end big tech’s censorship, Americans should demand that all government officials — including the president — not violate the First Amendment. We must work to put an end to government officials pressuring or even “encouraging” social media platforms either to silence any American citizen because of his opinions or to downplay or suppress any news story. The way to protect free speech online is to separate tech and state.