Amen!

He's gone and the world somehow seems a calmer, safer place....

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Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad !

I think Twitter was quite funny announcing #presidentbiden immediately after the oath, for some reason they were rather early this time and had to wait 10 minutes until he really was president - they are usually a little after noon before they do the oath

Perhaps the sitting one had absconded a bit earlier.

Farewell Don. Don't rush back.

Obama started (6 wars) oversaw a massive expansion in drone killings world wide and made some of the largest upward transfers of wealth in history. Biden has voted for every war that has come before him & the democratic party has just refused to even debate universal health care. Also the Democratic party is happy to censor all sorts of speech, in cahoots with tech companies.

Both parties have been screwing over the working class (& now the middle class) heavily since the 1970's. So along comes a nut job like Trump who says what the disenfranchised want to hear and he's voted in. Those 75 million who voted for him aren't going anywhere. Next time someone with a bit more intelligence than Trump will come along and then there really will be trouble.

It's a very dangerous situation.

Only the government can censor you. If a company chooses not to publish your work it's not censorship.

If the government bans you from starting your own publishing platform or from speaking on someone else's it *might* be censorship (or it might be that you're defamatory or fraudulent or in some other way breaking one of societie's many other rules that already limit your free speech).

If you don't want to get banned from popular platforms, don't spread lies or incite hate or do anything else those platforms don't want assoicated with their brands. Twitter has no obligation to publish Trump and suggesting that his removal is akin so censorship is crazy.

I wish they'd "censored" it earlier. I know people in the UK who've been sucked into the q anon alternate reality and it's unimaginably bad - they are not the same people that they used to be.
We can all agree and disagree on specific policy decisions but Obama was basically a good politician and a better person (not that that's hard).

Where I do agree is that the next republican could be way more dangerous. The first senator to say that he wouldn't ratify the decision (probably not the right words) is being touted as a future leader and he is frankly terrifying because he's relatively intelligent and ruthless. His name is Josh Hawley. I assume he doesn't actually believe the conspiracy theories he's popularising (who knows?) but is smart enough to use it as his power base.
I read a brilliant book over the summer called Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen. I'd highly recommend it.

“Only the government can censor you. If a company chooses not to publish your work it's not censorship.”

That’s not correct but I don’t want to get into a discussion about different definitions when most people would understand what it means.

Big platforms like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc should be treated as public utilities. Their reach and influence is far beyond anything comparable in history. If they censor you can’t get your message out.

There is a massive debate about internet censorship and how/or if it should be controlled. Currently you have unaccountable executives deciding this. So although Trump is banned from Twitter ( ), UnHerd had one of their videos banned from YouTube – no explanation and no appeal. UnHerd got their video re-instated due to public pressure – but not all voices will be able to do that – and UnHerd now say how dangerous censorship is.

Nearly 100% of Israeli government requests to Facebook to block Palestinian content (from journalists & activists etc) is approved. None of the Palestinian requests are approved - therefore their story is not told. The rich will censor dissenting voices from the right or left. You can’t pick and choose who you censor.

If someone breaks the law it’s up to the government to regulate or prosecute.

In 2008 Wikileaks published a classified Pentagon Document. It said that they were worried about the growing anti-war sentiment in Western Europe several governments had lost elections as their populations turned against the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq. The Pentagon was concerned that they would lose their allies and have to fight alone. They said their only hope of reversing this trend was for Barak Obama to be elected – a more cosmopolitan, elegant & pleasant face on this war – he could sell the war(s) as benevolent. They don’t like Trump because he’s nasty person (which he is) it’s that he doesn’t put a pretty face on American imperialism, and he can’t deceive people.

Jimmydore glenngreenwald Fake Progressiveness – into youtube says it much better than I do.