Guest essay by Eric Worrall
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning new censorship laws, a harsh crack down on “fake news”, which according to President Obama seems to include any criticism of climate theory.
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“Something has changed — as globalization has marched on, [political] debate is taking place in a completely new media environment. Opinions aren’t formed the way they were 25 years ago,” she said Wednesday while addressing Germany’s Bundestag, or parliament. “Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms, and we have to learn to deal with them.”
Merkel indicated that she supported tougher measures to crack down on hate speech in its various forms and figure out new ways to regulate the complicated ecosystem of online information (and misinformation).
“I believe we should not underestimate what is happening in the context of the Internet and with digitalization; this is part of our reality,” Merkel said. “We have regulations that allow for our press freedom, including the requirement for due diligence from journalists. Today we have many that experience a media that is based on very different foundations and is much less regulated.”
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President Obama stating the problematic new media ecosystem includes “climate denial”
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The new media ecosystem “means everything is true and nothing is true,” Obama told me later. “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll. And the capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal—that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”
That marked a decisive change from previous political eras, he maintained. “Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us,” he said. “And then we would have a debate about how to fix it. That’s how, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, you had Republicans supporting the Clean Air Act and you had a market-based fix for acid rain rather than a command-and-control approach. So you’d argue about means, but there was a baseline of facts that we could all work off of. And now we just don’t have that.”
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Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/obama-reckons-with-a-trump-presidency
Does Angela Merkel think criticism of climate science should be included in her crackdown? I haven’t found a direct quote where Merkel describes climate “denial” as “fake news”, but given how close she is to President Obama on this subject, this seems a reasonable assumption.
Under German Law, Merkel has the power to prosecute or imprison people who voice proscribed opinions. German Law, unlike the US Constitution, does not provide a guarantee of free speech. German law contains a broad and vaguely defined concept of Volksverhetzung, “incitement of the masses”.
Volksverhetzung, in English “incitement of the masses”, “instigation of the people” (the official English translation of the German Criminal Code uses “incitement to hatred”), is a concept in German criminal law that refers to incitement to hatred against segments of the population and refers to calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them, including assaults against the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population.
It is often applied to, though not limited to, trials relating to Holocaust denial in Germany. The criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch) Chapter 7 (Offences against public order), Paragraph 130 (Incitement to hatred) of the Federal Republic of Germany defines when a person is guilty of Volksverhetzung.
The concept draws criticism by press and legal scholars for not being defined with the necessary definiteness and violating the principle of clarity and definiteness (Bestimmtheitsgrundsatz) and thus is called an elastic clause (Gummiparagraph) allowing in theory to punish nearly any political statment made and violating the freedom of speech.
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Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
The only silver lining to this ghastly business is in order to legally persecute “climate deniers”, if this is Merkel’s intention, she will have to define what climate denial actually is. Defining climate “denial” is harder than it might seem, because there is a lot of agreement about the fundamental physics. A legal definition of climate “denial” would have to include ridiculously prescriptive clauses, such as “expressing a belief that equilibrium climate sensitivity may be less than 1.5c / doubling of CO2”.
Usually its those creating these stupid rules that find themselves being hoisted by their own petard.
Even if that’s not the case, the reason conspiracy theories were rife in the Soviet Union was because the people knew the media lied to them all the time, so they’d believe anything that wasn’t reported in the media. We saw something similar in the run-up to the election: Americans knew the media was deep in the trough for Clinton, so they’d believe this ‘fake news’ about Clinton because the media refused to touch it, even to prove it wasn’t true.
The more the media are shown to be just another arm of government, the less power they have.
Excellent observation. A corrupt media, even one self corrupted, no longer merits the confidence of the people.
I suspect part of this is also driven by the dinosaur media. The presstitutes blew their load for Clinton, and now Trump isn’t even talking to them, except to insult them. They’ve gone from the glorious gatekeepers and valiant champions of freedom to irrelevant in just a few months.
Clearly they’d love to be The Official Gatekeepers Of Truth again, and have all other ‘news’ banned.
The huge irony here, is that what merkel is against is the plethora of stories on the internet. But because she’s a dinosaur from the old days of press dominance of the news, she still thinks of censorship in terms of strop the oMSM printing stories.
In fact, all she will do by attacking the oMSM is to empower the nMSM – which is where all the stories she dislikes anyone hearing are circulating.
oMSM = once Mainstream Media
nMSM = new Mainstream Media = Social media
President Obama’s comments are certainly a comment of misinformation. By singling out explanations by a “Nobel-prize winning physicist” and “somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll” as looking “exactly the same” he implies that one is undoubtedly correct, one is undoubtedly incorrect — and that the reader *cannot* tell the difference. Perhaps that’s true for President Obama, it would explain so much.
I wonder who it is he had in mind. I reviewed the list of nobel prize winners in physics and recognize none of them as participants in the climate wars. None of the nobel touts for their works mention climate. I know of no reason why any of them would be considered more expert on the subject than (for example) Freeman Dyson. “Somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll” might actually include an actual climate scientist, though again I’m curious who the president had in mind. The letter at KochFacts.com shows them declining to give any information to Boxer, Markey, and Whitehouse’s fishing expedition.
The quote that “everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us,” introduces a *brand new* “fact”, upgrading the traditional 97% to 99%, and reformulating the generally accepted “anthropogenic emissions affect climate” into the completely incompatible with history and geology concept that climate change “is the consequence of man-made behavior.” All hail the denier-in-chief.
But even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend he’s only thinking of the marginal climatic effect of man-made behavior, he skips a step by moving directly to “And then we would have a debate about how to fix it.” Actually, the next step would be to decide *whether* to fix it. We’ve warned about 1C since the late 19th century (a significant chunk of which happened prior to 1950), with *no net harm* being demonstrated by absolutely anybody. I have little faith in the damage estimates in the IPCC, but they are small potatoes in contrast to the assumed economic growth. Even if it were possible to wholly mitigate global warming, it would make little sense for a comparatively poorer world of 2016 to make large sacrifices for the benefit of a comparatively much richer world of 2100. It makes even less sense when attempted mitigation strategies suppress economic growth, harming both 2016 and 2100. Does anyone seriously believe we would be better off today if the world of 1896 decided to voluntarily forgo the use of oil and coal, in hopes of saving us from the terrible consequences of a 1C rise in temperature?
“I wonder who it is he had in mind. I reviewed the list of nobel prize winners in physics and recognize none of them as participants in the climate wars. None of the nobel touts for their works mention climate.”
Obama may have been referring to himself when talking about a Nobel prize winner. He likes to talk about himself a lot.
Don’t forget “…flashy (apparently widely distributed)”- Michael E. Man self-proclaimed Nobel Laureate
Angela is almost unique in the divided Germany of her time. Born in W. Germany but raised in E. Germany when her mad Marxist father actually moved the entire family the other side of the wall. She really struggles with this whole democracy thingy at times. As for free speech …
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/angelas-ashes/
Pointman
An excellent essay Pointman; Thank you.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2016/09/30/angelas-ashes/
Here is a similar note sent to Benny Peiser of the GWPF in March 2015:
[excerpt]
Andrew Montford’s article is excellent.
If it continues on its current course, Europe will become a museum, a later Luxor (Thebes). A society can only sustain so many foolish policies.
Best, Allan
“An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll.”
An explanation from a Nobel Prize-sinning politician looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change science by somebody on the same payroll- There fixed.
Perhaps you can tell that to the 88% of Australian farmers who think that AGW is real and is affecting their livelihood now. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/farmers-demand-the-coalition-government-does-more-on-climate-change-20161128-gszkja
No one cares what this pair of morons say or think. Obama is a vaguely ridiculous has-been lousy potus and Merkel is the woman who made the single most mind-bogglingly stupid decision in the entire history of politics. Both are the walking dead and it’s great to see them now stripped of their Emperor’s New Ethics and in their final desperation revealing themselves on the World stage as the vile totalitarians they truly are.
I suppose it isn’t too surprising that people with the ignorance and arrogance to think they can control the planetary climate would also think it’s a trivial matter to control the internet and what people discuss. It’s a wonderful time to be alive and watching these creatures drown in their own night soil.
The Volstead Act is a good example of how not to do it. Although prohibited by law, there were exemptions and speakeasies galore, and you could buy liquor by the gallon virtually at every corner. I expect something very similar to happen here. But it’s not nice to know the Deutsche Demokratische Gestapo having a nark in every family with the Blockwart monitoring.
Attacking Moscow wasn’t a good plan either if you’re looking at bad decisions, didn’t work out too well for a couple of tyrants we had to deal with in the past.
I’ve read that the attack could have succeeded had the German’s treated the people who lived in areas they had captured from the Russians. The people in these regions hated the Russians and would have voluntarily helped the German’s in their continuing attacks.
Instead the Germans treated those people worse than the Russians did, and as a result had to station troops in these regions to keep them pacified.
“. . . most mind-bogglingly stupid decision in the entire history of politics. ”
A strong case can be made that it [I assume you refer to mass refugee importation] belongs on the shortlist*, but there are others which arguably should go higher on that list. A couple I can think of offhand: US intervention in World War One, and Germany returning Lenin to Russia.
* If ‘stupid political decision’ is defined as one that produces the opposite of the intended result, and assuming that the refugee decision was intended to benefit German civilization, it certainly qualifies. However, if one makes the hardly untoward assumption that it was intended to destroy German civilization, it must rank as one of the most brilliant decisions in the entire history of politics.
Looks like you can take the girl out of fascist East Germany, but you can’t the fascist East German out of the girl.
From Pointman’s blog (link given in his comment above):
Angela’s next blunder was to invite one and all war refugees from the Arab world into Europe. Come one, come all, and they did. As it turned out, the vast majority of them weren’t war refugees or not even economic migrants; they were welfare refugees and the bottom scrapings of the barrel in the Arab world, which is why no other Arab country would touch them with a barge pole.
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Unfortunately the problems with such a massive influx of shiftless foreign people doesn’t end there. They also brought with them a rape culture, a complete disregard for women, never mind their rights. Sexual assaults on women and children, both female and male, have gone through the roof.
The mass sexual assaults in German cities last New Year’s Eve were studiously not reported by the Politically Correct MSM. They only became widely known due to being reported and discussed in on-line social media. The sort of thing that would be suppressed under Angela’s crackdown on social media.
This
isn’t reported in German PC MSM as well. Info wars have already begun.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/11/29/eu-president-orders-no-referendums-lack-love-brussels/
Yeah, it’s a horror show if you are a female in Germany and other nations in Europe. Ole Merkel ought to take an evening stroll through a crowd of Arab men sometime. She might get a different perspective on the subject.
So Merkel doesn’t want Fake News countering Fake Climate Science?
Is she daft?
It really is funny how you guys actually believe that a poll is science.
@MarkW – “a poll is science”
It should not be surprising to anyone. That is all the 97% (Doran-Zimmerman) is! A badly constructed poll!
There’s a good chance that Angular Merkin won’t see her fourth term in office. The German people aren’t very enthused about having nigh on a million fake refugees dumped on them and told it is they who must conform, not the illegals.
Did Merkin learn nothing from the second world war and the rise of nazi fascism?
Or…. maybe she learned that it works really well.
I think modern Progressives are using that segment of history as an instruction manual.
Like my socialist friends, they are convinced that this time it will work.
… and the definition of insanity is…
Don’t forget Facebook founder Zuckerberg caught on a hot mic promising Merkel to help her get rid of objectionable content on Facebook. This was in 2015 as is an easy search if you want to find more detail.
Not Your Friends.
Hmmm. Right after her Obama meeting. Totalitarian minds think alike.
The Fake News narrative the Establishment is trying to create is, of course, itself fake news. In the first versions of this narrative I saw a few weeks ago, the Russians were blamed for the Fake News on the internet. Now that this claim has been laughed at, the new villains are “fake sites, bots, trolls”. The beauty of this being that, unlike the Russians, nobody can objectively define what a “fake site” or “troll” is, nor has anyone ever seen a “bot”. Producing evidence, therefore, will no longer be required.
The old, odd story: create an enemy outside your cosy little empire and bully under such a false pretense your ‘enemies’ inside. Mutti Macchiavelli Merkel?
Merkel, Obama and Ban Ki-Moon should sit down and read the universal declaration of human rights:
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion …
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
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Hypocrits.
“It can’t happen here” is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.”
― Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography
Flake News
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/10/25/down-goes-trump-toward-humiliating-defeat/
And of course as we found out, his Mic was defective and Hillary DID get questions beforehand.
Guess Trump is looking prescient instead of whiny now!
There is actually a such thing as fake news. For example. RT, TASS, Sputnik.
Or you can just call it “state media”.
Great article, by the way. That our lame duck anti-freedom deceitful President singled out climate skeptics as a way to demonstrate how he much he despises free speech and open discussion should send shivers down the spines of us all. This pathetic clown of a President really does hate us and really wishes us harm. He is a truly nasty combination of ignorance and bad intentions
We are all going to be the better when Mr. Obama is far from the levers of power.
And exactly how will you crack down on all the fakening going on Ange?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/beware-the-fakening/news-story/2613bd13e58ad75468e4ac2718a400a2
If they self-identify with these things isn’t that all that matters for Leftist Victimhood 101? You don’t think the growing affliction has something to do with wrapping the precious little petals in cotton wool with safe spaces and trigger warnings, or is it the illicit drug problem?
Die Fuehrerin did a nice job destroying Germany.
You can take the woman out of East Germany.
But, you can’t take the East Germany out of the woman.
Unbelievable! Eric Worrall made here a completely constructed story about Merkel. Statements like “Under German Law, Merkel has the power to prosecute or imprison people who voice proscribed opinions.” is just rubbish.
Merkel has the same right to inform against somebody as any citicen in Germany. If it comes to court, that`s the matter of an attorney.
Somebody who believes to know what other people are planning or thinking without any proof, equals to a dog talking about laying eggs.