Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory (Sept ’24)

We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20^th century to the repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments. To just say that those people were brainwashed too easily dismisses why people might feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Darryl Cooper does a good job trying to explain the mindset of those wedded to a socialist ideology in his recent Martyr Made podcast series, God’s Socialist: The Rise and Fall Of People’s Temple.

Towards the end of the 20^th century, passion for environmental causes displaced much of the socialist fervor of an earlier period. Environmental poisoning has been the overarching theme of the environmental movement, but the targets chosen for demonization changed over the years. The list of targets includes DDT, asbestos, nuclear power, CFCs, acid rain and more. In retrospect, the struggle against these things may not have satisfied fully the quest by movement members for self-meaning in the way that socialism had for a previous generation. The movement craved for an existential environmental threat that would infuse more passion and meaning to their fight. However, there was already an existential threat of global annihilation from nuclear war that hung over mankind. The environmental movement was going to find it hard to come up with an existential threat that topped nuclear armageddon, but with the introduction of climate catastrophism they were on their way to success.

Starting in the 1970s, there emerged two competing versions of climate catastrophism. One was man-made global-warming and the other was man-made global-cooling. According to the theories, the world was to be consumed either by fire or ice. For the environmental movement, it was important to emphasize the man-made nature of the threat. If it had not been man-made, it would not have fit their preferred narrative that man is evil and poisoning the environment by his greedy capitalist endeavors. They were not interested in being in the vanguard of movement that would spread fear about the end of Holocene period and the advent of an ice age if it were just a natural happening.

Both man-made global-warming and man-made global-cooling theories held sway with environmentalists during this early period. Activists, masquerading as scientists, got to work providing justification for their pet fears using computer models that simulated their preferred outcome. By the mid 1980s, the man-made global-cooling theory had been discarded in favor of man-made global-warming by the right-thinking people within the environmental movement. In the 1990s, in a move that both George Orwell and Karl Popper would have found amusing, anthropogenic global warming was rechristened as climate change, an ambiguous term that gave no indication of which direction the climate would change.

Today, climate catastrophism has adherents spread throughout all western institutions. The list of institutional bodies that they influence, or control is lengthy. They have embarked on a program to decarbonize the industrial world in a quest to avoid climate catastrophe. They deny to others, and themselves, that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They display the same fervor that an earlier generation of socialists and communists showed in the 20^th century. One should not forget about the social experiments that these earlier group of true believers ran on a global scale and the misery that they brought to millions.

When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. They derive life’s meaning from this endeavor. They will try to implement evermore convoluted net zero schemes in the hope that one will work. It won’t. Their bossiness and show of moral superiority will become intolerable and like an earlier generation of socialists and communists they will leave misery in their wake.

2

A Short Political History of Climate Change
Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory (Sept ’24)
We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20th century to the
repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly
underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive
regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments. To
just say that those people were brainwashed too easily dismisses why people
might feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Darryl
Cooper does a good job trying to explain the mindset of those wedded to a
socialist ideology in his recent Martyr Made podcast series, God’s Socialist: The
Rise and Fall Of People’s Temple.
Towards the end of the 20th century, passion for environmental causes
displaced much of the socialist fervor of an earlier period. Environmental
poisoning has been the overarching theme of the environmental movement,
but the targets chosen for demonization changed over the years. The list of
targets includes DDT, asbestos, nuclear power, CFCs, acid rain and more. In
retrospect, the struggle against these things may not have satisfied fully the
quest by movement members for self-meaning in the way that socialism had
for a previous generation. The movement craved for an existential
environmental threat that would infuse more passion and meaning to their
fight. However, there was already an existential threat of global annihilation
from nuclear war that hung over mankind. The environmental movement was
going to find it hard to come up with an existential threat that topped nuclear
armageddon, but with the introduction of climate catastrophism they were on
their way to success.
Starting in the 1970s, there emerged two competing versions of climate
catastrophism. One was man-made global-warming and the other was man-
made global-cooling. According to the theories, the world was to be consumed
either by fire or ice. For the environmental movement, it was important to
emphasize the man-made nature of the threat. If it had not been man-made, it
would not have fit their preferred narrative that man is evil and poisoning the
environment by his greedy capitalist endeavors. They were not interested in
being in the vanguard of movement that would spread fear about the end of
Holocene period and the advent of an ice age if it were just a natural
happening.
Both man-made global-warming and man-made global-cooling theories held
sway with environmentalists during this early period. Activists, masquerading

as scientists, got to work providing justification for their pet fears using
computer models that simulated their preferred outcome. By the mid 1980s,
the man-made global-cooling theory had been discarded in favor of man-made
global-warming by the right-thinking people within the environmental
movement. In the 1990s, in a move that both George Orwell and Karl Popper
would have found amusing, anthropogenic global warming was rechristened
as climate change, an ambiguous term that gave no indication of which
direction the climate would change.
Today, climate catastrophism has adherents spread throughout all western
institutions. The list of institutional bodies that they influence, or control is
lengthy. They have embarked on a program to decarbonize the industrial world
in a quest to avoid climate catastrophe. They deny to others, and themselves,
that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the
face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They display the same fervor
that an earlier generation of socialists and communists showed in the 20th
century. One should not forget about the social experiments that these earlier
group of true believers ran on a global scale and the misery that they brought
to millions.
When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. They derive life’s meaning
from this endeavor. They will try to implement evermore convoluted net zero
schemes in the hope that one will work. It won’t. Their bossiness and show of
moral superiority will become intolerable and like an earlier generation of
socialists and communists they will leave misery in their wake.

2

A Short Political History of Climate Change
Bill Ponton, Princeton Venture Advisory (Sept ’24)
We often attribute the longevity of communist states in the 20th century to the
repression practiced by those regimes. This is undeniably true, but we grossly
underestimate the fact that many people living under those repressive
regimes derived meaning from being part of those socialist experiments. To
just say that those people were brainwashed too easily dismisses why people
might feel the need to be part of something bigger than themselves. Darryl
Cooper does a good job trying to explain the mindset of those wedded to a
socialist ideology in his recent Martyr Made podcast series, God’s Socialist: The
Rise and Fall Of People’s Temple.
Towards the end of the 20th century, passion for environmental causes
displaced much of the socialist fervor of an earlier period. Environmental
poisoning has been the overarching theme of the environmental movement,
but the targets chosen for demonization changed over the years. The list of
targets includes DDT, asbestos, nuclear power, CFCs, acid rain and more. In
retrospect, the struggle against these things may not have satisfied fully the
quest by movement members for self-meaning in the way that socialism had
for a previous generation. The movement craved for an existential
environmental threat that would infuse more passion and meaning to their
fight. However, there was already an existential threat of global annihilation
from nuclear war that hung over mankind. The environmental movement was
going to find it hard to come up with an existential threat that topped nuclear
armageddon, but with the introduction of climate catastrophism they were on
their way to success.
Starting in the 1970s, there emerged two competing versions of climate
catastrophism. One was man-made global-warming and the other was man-
made global-cooling. According to the theories, the world was to be consumed
either by fire or ice. For the environmental movement, it was important to
emphasize the man-made nature of the threat. If it had not been man-made, it
would not have fit their preferred narrative that man is evil and poisoning the
environment by his greedy capitalist endeavors. They were not interested in
being in the vanguard of movement that would spread fear about the end of
Holocene period and the advent of an ice age if it were just a natural
happening.
Both man-made global-warming and man-made global-cooling theories held
sway with environmentalists during this early period. Activists, masquerading

as scientists, got to work providing justification for their pet fears using
computer models that simulated their preferred outcome. By the mid 1980s,
the man-made global-cooling theory had been discarded in favor of man-made
global-warming by the right-thinking people within the environmental
movement. In the 1990s, in a move that both George Orwell and Karl Popper
would have found amusing, anthropogenic global warming was rechristened
as climate change, an ambiguous term that gave no indication of which
direction the climate would change.
Today, climate catastrophism has adherents spread throughout all western
institutions. The list of institutional bodies that they influence, or control is
lengthy. They have embarked on a program to decarbonize the industrial world
in a quest to avoid climate catastrophe. They deny to others, and themselves,
that their program will have any deleterious side effects on the economy in the
face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They display the same fervor
that an earlier generation of socialists and communists showed in the 20th
century. One should not forget about the social experiments that these earlier
group of true believers ran on a global scale and the misery that they brought
to millions.
When does the fantasy end for them? It doesn’t. They derive life’s meaning
from this endeavor. They will try to implement evermore convoluted net zero
schemes in the hope that one will work. It won’t. Their bossiness and show of
moral superiority will become intolerable and like an earlier generation of
socialists and communists they will leave misery in their wake.

Essay by Eric Worrall

As Australia approaches its next cycle of state and federal elections, the radical Aussie Federal Government is pushing laws which could silence media criticism of their key policy positions.

‘Attack on our freedoms’: Government’s revised online misinformation bill slammed as ‘chilling assault’ on free speech

Labor’s new online misinformation bill has been slammed as a “chilling assault” on freedom of speech, with critics claiming the government’s definition of “serious harm” could capture “any difference of opinion”. 

Patrick Hannaford Digital Reporter
4 min read
September 12, 2024 – 5:00PM

…

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland introduced the legislation to Parliament on Thursday, claiming misinformation and disinformation pose a “serious threat” to Australian’s  “safety and wellbeing” as well as “our democracy, society and economy”.

The Albanese government was forced to abandon a previous draft version of the laws after they were widely condemned by everyone from media organisations and tech companies to civil liberties groups and even the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Minister Rowland said the government had listened to the feedback and the new legislation had been revised to “carefully balance the public interest in combatting seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation with the freedom of expression that is so fundamental to our democracy”.

But critics are already lining up to attack the bill, with the Institute of Public Affairs describing the legislation as “the single biggest attack on freedom of speech in Australia’s peacetime history”.

“Misinformation legislation introduced into federal parliament today represents a chilling assault on every Australian’s right to free speech. The new Bill broadens provisions to censor speech, which even the government’s fatally flawed first draft did not include,” said John Storey, the Director of Law and Policy at the IPA.

…

Read more: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/attack-on-our-freedoms-governments-revised-online-misinformation-bill-slammed-as-chilling-assault-on-free-speech/news-story/03f202bf41f4255fd0f7c4b4c05682fe

The Institute of Public Affairs has this to say about the new laws.

Revised Misinformation Laws Amp Up Assault On Free Speech

Written by: John Storey
12 September 2024

“Misinformation legislation introduced into federal parliament today represents a chilling assault on every Australian’s right to free speech. The new Bill broadens provisions to censor speech, which even the government’s fatally flawed first draft did not include,” said John Storey, Director of Law and Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs.

The revised Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 grants the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) enormous power to fine social media companies if they are found to have failed to properly censor ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. The new Bill contains three fundamental flaws:

• A revised definition of ‘misinformation’ to mean content that is ‘verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive’ would create legal powers for politically biased fact-checkers to determine what is true and false (Clauses 13(1) and 13(2)).
• It creates an unelected and unaccountable star chamber bureaucracy with the power to launch investigations and hearings to ensure compliance with censorship guidelines that can target mainstream Australians (Schedule 2, Clause 2).
• A new definition of ‘serious harm’ is even broader than the first bill and can potentially capture any difference of opinion (Clause 14).

“The government’s proposed ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ laws are the single biggest attack on freedom of speech in Australia’s peacetime history, and have no place in a liberal democracy such as Australia,” said Mr Storey.

“The big tech companies will become the censorship and enforcement arm of the federal government to shut down debate and speech that it disagrees with.”

“Under these laws even the truth will be no defence. If a citizen were to disseminate information which was factually true, but ACMA or a fact checker labelled it ‘misleading’ or ‘deceptive’ because it ‘lacked context’, then that information would fall within the scope of these laws,” said Mr Storey.

The revised legislation has not taken into account the deep concern of many mainstream Australians who can now be targeted by an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy for prosecution for simply stating genuinely held opinions online.

“The federal government has not listened to the concerns about free speech raised by mainstream Australians. Instead, they are pandering to its political base by actually broadening the censorship powers of ACMA, such as introducing by stealth a change to the definition of ‘harm’ to include ‘vilification’,” said Mr Storey.

Previous research by the Institute of Public Affairs found that fact-checking organisations were systematically biased and targeted the ‘No’ campaign in the Voice to Parliament referendum. That research found

• So-called ‘fact-checkers’ published 187 fact checking articles related to the Voice – 170 of these assessments, or 91%, targeted claims of those who supported the No case.
• Almost every example supporting the No case was assessed to be false. 99% per cent of assessed claims supporting the No case were deemed ‘false’, whereas only 59% of the comparatively few claims assessed supporting the Yes case were deemed ‘false’.

To download the IPA’s previous research click here.

Read more: https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/media-releases/revised-misinformation-laws-amp-up-assault-on-free-speech

The IPA article (above) suggests individuals as well as organisations could be targeted.

The following submission from the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering (ATSE) and the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) makes it very clear that climate skepticism is in the firing line of the new disinformation laws. If this legislation is passed, going by this submission Australia’s premier scientific bodies will push for anyone who publicly disagrees with their alarmist stance on climate change and the Great Barrier Reef to be silenced using the new laws. They even slipped in a reference to President Trump (top of Page 4).

I’m not sure exactly what Anthony would do with a subpoena from the Australian government to cease and desist publishing climate “disinformation”, and to provide the full contact details of all authors, but I’m guessing it would make for a fun WUWT article.

Our favourite reef rebel Peter Ridd has started producing a series of videos on Australia’s woke scientific institutions and other interesting topics, well worth watching, in my opinion demonstrating why Australia’s science institutes are unfit to be gatekeepers of scientific truth. It was one of Peter’s videos which alerted me to the extremist submission above.

Elon Musk, who has very much been in the firing line for standing up to the Australian Government and winning, has just one word for this latest push to suppress freedom of expression.

As WUWT has previously shown, what is happening in Australia is part of a bigger picture. Across the world, radical left wing politicians appear to be acting simultaneously to silence opposition to their policies.

In South America and Europe, freedom is being eroded by increasingly punitive laws aimed at silencing critics of left wing policies.

Musk’s X banned in Brazil after disinformation row

Could Elon Musk actually be arrested and X cancelled?

The USA is not immune to this worldwide radical attempt by governments to impose censorship of “disinformation”.

The USA has strong protections against the Federal Government coercing public speech, but this has not stopped the European Union from allegedly applying indirect coercion to censor people in the United States – possibly at the behest of the Biden Administration.

In at least one case the Federal Government has been accused of acting directly to censor Americans – in my opinion a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.

Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to ‘censor’ some COVID-19 content during the pandemic

Politics Aug 27, 2024 11:26 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says senior Biden administration officials pressured Facebook to “censor” some COVID-19 content during the pandemic and vowed that the social media giant would push back if it faced such demands again.

WATCH: Meta’s Nick Clegg on the challenges of AI content and misinformation

In a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg alleges that the officials, including those from the White House, “repeatedly pressured” Facebook for months to take down “certain COVID-19 content including humor and satire.”

…

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic

The US Constitution is an inspiration to the world, an effort by some very clever people to try to safeguard the freedom they paid for with blood for future generations. But your Federal Government just allegedly got away with a flagrant breaches of the First Amendment. No politician or staffer who allegedly committed these acts has faced any serious legal consequences for their actions. The people responsible for these alleged violations of the constitution, so far have gotten away with their alleged crimes.

Unless you elect politicians who uphold and protect the laws and constitution of the United States, what is happening in Australia right now could easily happen to the USA, regardless of the protections enshrined in the US Constitution. Unless wrongdoers face genuine legal consequences for violating the constitution, those who violate the constitution will feel safe to continue violating the constitution whenever convenient. The constitution is a document – it needs the support of politicians, attorneys, a judiciary and a people who believe in and work to uphold the safeguards in the US Constitution to make it work.