Spare a moment to celebrate the outstanding bravery of Elon Musk, and how much he risked to play a key role in this historic election. It was all or nothing…

The Australian Government wants to stop people talking on X and on this blog

The same day America votes to be the Land of the Free — Australia is passing laws to fine and imprison people from saying something the government disagrees with.  Soon we will not be allowed to point out side effects and risks of "public health" measures, nor say anything that damages faith in our bankers. 100% of vaccines are 100% good and central banks are not insolvent!

The deceptive Australian Labor Party snuck through the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2024 (MAD Bill) under the pandemonium of the US Election day news. Perhaps they were just embarrassed their billion dollar ABC news is such an abject failure at stamping out *misinformation* because no one watches it anymore. Or maybe they hid the Misinformation Bill because they knew Australians would not like being treated like babies who can't figure out the truth for themselves. The Albanese government went out of its way to introduce a special standing order to get around the normal parliamentary process. It will be in the Senate on Monday next week!

If citizens say something the government deems to be misinformation, huge fines will apply to social media, blogs and forums. Instead of having the implicit right to criticize the government we will need to "prove" our comments were scientific, religious or satirical in a court of law. How many lawyers do you have?

Ultimately, only the rich will be allowed to speak, and forums like X — the citizens news service, will have to guess what is considered misinformation this week. For more details on this see Tony Nikolic's post at Maryanne Demasi's blog.

He quotes John F Kennedy and Franklin D Roosevelt:

When the government becomes the sole arbiter of truth, it opens the door to corruption and tyranny. When citizens are too afraid to speak out, the government with its cheerleading bureaucracy and corporate sector can operate without accountability, leading to an erosion of trust in institutions.