Censorship Is Back in the News

From Dr. Mauser at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas: I’ll say it: I told you so

Censorship has come to the UK and Europe.

So British and EU censorship laws have dropped, and especially on X, people are hitting the roof as every adult flagged account they follow from everywhere in the world is blocked for them.

The same people who wanted Trump silenced, and now upset that they and the people they like are silenced.

If you tolerate censorship in any form, simply because you think it only applies to the people you don’t like, you’re only fooling yourself. If you don’t stand on the principle of free speech for everyone, it WILL absolutely come around and bite you in the ass.

Hat tip to Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.

Europe's War on Free Speech

Why do Europeans hate freedom? Tariffs for Truth: Why the U.S. Must Use Economic Power to Confront EU Censorship

Censorship is no longer the domain of dictatorships. In the modern West, it's been repackaged as “content moderation,” buried in bureaucratic language, and enforced by regulatory regimes with transnational reach. Nowhere is this more evident than in the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA)—a sprawling regulatory framework that forces platforms to suppress lawful speech under the pretext of safety and misinformation control.

The DSA is more than a European problem. Through the “Brussels Effect,” it extends its reach into American cyberspace by coercing U.S. firms—Meta, Google, X, Amazon, and others—into enforcing European censorship standards globally. What Brussels can’t accomplish through persuasion, it is attempting through economic coercion: obey or be fined into submission.

Hat tip to The EU Declared War on Free Speech. Trump Has the Nukes (Tariffs) - Flopping Aces

EU to Germany - Do What You're Told

Because nothing says respect for the democratic process like throwing out the result of elections. EU Globalist Explicitly Threatens To Cancel German Election Result If Right Wing AfD Wins | ZeroHedge

Former French European Commissioner Thierry Breton has essentially openly confessed that the West stole the Romanian election and stands ready to do it again in Germany if deemed necessary.

"We did it in Romania, and we will do it in Germany if necessary," a translation from the French of Breton's recent appearance in European media said. Early last month a top Romanian court simply annulled the first round of the country's presidential election in order to create what amounted to a 'do over' election.

And what they are told is to shut up and accept as many immigrants as the EU wants to send their way.

Europeans Don't Like Free Speech

From Don Surber we get the following: Musk 1, Eurocrat 0

When you mess with the bull, ...

The opening salvo from the EU was in July.

On July 12, AP reported, “The European Union said Friday that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk’s X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements, the first charges against a tech company since the bloc’s new social media regulations took effect.”

EU was upset that Twitter now charges people with a blue check $8 a month — $7 by yearly subscription.

Musk responded by telling the world how the EU tried to coerce him into censoring people that the EU didn't like.

Then Thierry Breton, the one-time Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU, sent a threatening letter to Musk about silencing "hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation." Who gets to decide what is disinformation? Why Thierry Breton of course.

After that Congress sent a letter to the EU wanting to understand how they are threatening Americans' right to Free Speech, and an American company.

And finally, the EU, recognizing a losing battle, canned Thierry Breton.

On Monday, Breton resigned — although the letter he ironically posted on Twitter indicates European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen forced him out.

There is more, including an indictment of "newspapers that have moved away from reporting news and using paper." Click thru.

Where Would We Be Without Experts?

Experts predicted that if the UK exited the European Union, their economy would collapse. The economic case against Brexit has now totally collapsed - spiked

And they didn't mean that Germany's economy would collapse.

Ever since the first days of the EU referendum campaign in 2016, the Remain side has been warning us that economic disaster is on the horizon. Time and again, they have reminded us of the near-total ‘expert’ consensus that leaving the EU would shatter the UK economy. Since we formally left the EU in 2020, elite Remainers have developed a kind of Brexit Tourette’s syndrome. Seemingly every economic challenge, from pandemic-induced supply-chain snarl-ups to post-Ukraine energy-price hikes, is now blamed squarely on Brexit.

Except things are never quite what the experts tell use they are.

All during the early days of the Ukraine/Russia War, the energy shocks that all of Europe was dealing with from the absense of Russian natural gas was blamed on Brexit. Lately however, that isn't working out too well.

Except last week, Britain’s GDP figures were radically revised. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) now says that the UK economy actually recovered from the pandemic recession back in 2021. It turns out that wholesalers and the healthcare sector, in particular, had produced much greater output than previously thought.

These updated figures suggest that the UK economy is as much as two per cent larger than previously believed. This means that the UK can no longer be considered the worst-performing economy in the G7. In fact, post-Brexit, the UK recovered from the pandemic at a similar rate to France and at a faster pace than Germany, Europe’s largest economy.

This reminds me of the experts who said that the US couldn't move its embassy to Jerusalem, as has been required by law for a VERY long time, because if we did all hell would break loose. And then we did, under the Trump administration, and all hell did not break out. Experts. What would we do without them? Aside from live a more democratic existence, of course.

Nexit: Is The Netherlands Next in Line for the Exit?

Because it is just that the EU wants the Dutch to finance Southern Europe. Nexit: Dutch ‘only tolerated EU when UK was key member’

THE EU's relationship with the Netherlands was thrown into sharp focus following Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic, triggering fears that the member state may leave the bloc

As for the financing...

The French President Emmanuel Macron told the Financial Times that the bloc’s fate effectively rested on Germany and the Netherlands agreeing to “financial transfers and solidarity” to dodge populism in the major member states.

That is paying off the debts of states that can't make ends meet.

Click thru, there is much more, from history of the European Economic Community, to Brexit and beyond.