Imported government rule, or unpredictable uprising?

Pakistanis may be forced to choose between accepting the imported government that was imposed by the removal of PM Imran Khan, or setting a course into destabilisation as the West’s agents and local traitors use any trick to keep control.

Some commentators such as George Galloway (tweet deleted but I linked it when it was still live, anyway) seemed to suggest there could be some sort of conflict breaking out between the people and the imported government of Shehbaz Sharif. The demand of everyone concerned is just that there should be an election soon, rather than an acute political conflict, but how likely is a peaceful and valid election to happen in a country just recently subjected to US-led regime-change? It seems more likely that protesters would have to fight, just for this modest demand to be met. The question then is, is it really worth it?

State effective at suppressing the people

One must consider that any organised aspect of mass disobedience is always suppressed quickly if the state takes serious action to stop it (this applies in any country). The people themselves are never a sufficient force for regime change (or in this case, restoration), which is only ever orchestrated successfully by people with foreign backing or substantial state-like powers, regardless of how much support they have among everyday citizens.

When people, such as Donald Trump’s supporters in the United States, believe too much in American national founding myths and consequently think that popular disaffection alone can result in regime change, they are invariably disappointed. Real regime change, or even a successful movement, is coordinated by organised actors, whether for good or evil ends.

It is clear that the Shehbaz Sharif government (likely with the blessing of the Democrat-controlled White House) is okay with treating Imran Khan supporters in a repressive way via arrests, much the way Trump's supporters were treated after the Capitol Attack.

Even the most unpopular regimes are able to maintain their grip on power, only really losing it if they cannot maintain the living standards, food supply and necessities that keep the people indebted to their power.

If it were to happen, the only likely regime change or even guarantee of prompt elections in Pakistan would have to probably come from the intervention of the Pakistani Army, who are accused anyway of playing a big role in removing Imran Khan in the first place. And a scenario of the Army or security forces mutinying, even to side with the people, is dangerous, especially considering the possible foreign involvement of the US and its ability to sponsor violence if it does not like such a change of power.

First and foremost, the top concern should be that people of Pakistan should stay safe, even if it results in a puppet regime. It is a difficult moral choice between being a subservient nation for the sake of order and safety, or a defiant nation that could risk chaos and strife.

All stability is precious

Pakistan is by no means exceptionally vulnerable or contemptible, even as a US puppet. Britain is also not its own master, compelled by what are arguably pro-American and pro-European traitors into ignoring the national will or treating it with disdain, as seen with Brexit. It seems to be in our character that we make the choice for stability rather than for confrontation on an insurmountable issue, because people are just more worried about anarchy than injustice, and we have always been this way.

What marks good people apart from the kind of psychopathic warmongers who drive US foreign policy plotters and their coups is the view that stability is a precious oasis in a chaotic world. Order is invaluable to the lives of the vast majority of people, however suffocating the status quo may be to an idealist. US warmongers and Neocons cannot hold such a view, because their distorted morals hold that mass death and misery on any scale and for any duration are justifiable to satisfy their often crazed and anarchistic political demands (which are often based on propaganda and fakes anyway). They are uniquely evil among sentient beings for this reason (the only other faction like this being ISIS, which many Neocons were apologists for in Syria). Responsible players need not be like them, and should instead opt for stability and reconciliation even when their political wishes are not quite met.

Uprisings and acute political conflicts are tolerable only if the alternative is known to be worse. If the imported government in Pakistan creates intolerable conditions for the nation because it places Western masters over the people, then the time is right that the people and state must take risks to save themselves. Until then, everything should just be subjected to a risk-benefit assessment, with any sort of dramatic regime change or restoration being understood to be a dangerous course.

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Elon Musk scandal timing suggests smear campaign

Popular billionaire tycoon Elon Musk has been the target of sexual harassment allegations reminiscent of those against Donald Trump, including the familiar claim of paying for an individual’s silence.

Such claims against Musk are carried by journalists, and occurred at a time when he was clashing with the very same journalistic community about freedom of speech. This indicates that what is happening is a smear campaign, likely by elements associated with the Democratic Party in the United States

Journalists lie

Journalists and mainstream media outlets cannot be trusted. They are able to lie, and then later retract their claims and apologise when the damage is done, thereby continuing to maintain their supposed reputation for journalistic integrity. This 'oops' model of disinformation means that none of the current headlines can be taken seriously, since every point they make may simply be retracted quietly later.

It is entirely possible that some months after all the damage is done, it will quietly emerge that Elon Musk didn't do anything. One could point to Musk's ability to sue for defamation, but this can neither undo the damage to him, nor necessarily cause damage to the business of the offending publication or network.

It could alternatively be the case that Elon Musk’s transgressions are true, but that they are true of virtually all celebrities of similar status in the US. It may be that journalists just use this as a way of attacking the person if they become a political enemy. There seems to be virtually no high-profile individual, especially a political target, in the United States. who doesn't eventually get accused of something grave.

Non sequitur in the free speech debate

Finally, people should bear in mind that Elon Musk’s personal character has little to do with his disputes with journalists and management at Twitter after securing a deal to buy the company. It does nothing to discredit his views of journalistic and online freedoms, any more than spurious and eventually withdrawn rape allegations discredited Julian Assange's journalistic work.

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Space Force expansion unmasks Biden as Trump?

Donald Trump's opponents ridiculed the US Space Force, which was originally presented as a flagship policy of his presidency and somehow indicative of the flaws of his leadership.

We were expected to believe that the Space Force somehow distinguished Trump from what would have been Clinton’s policies. However, in reality, everything would be the same, regardless of who led it and took responsibility.

Joe Biden, far from scrapping the "Trumpian" branch of the US military, kept and is expected to expand the Space Force, creating a Space National Guard, this being one of his own supposedly unique decisions. This time, the initiative for more of exactly the same thing is coming from the other party, as if the two parties are one and the same.

President poser

The same tendency to have a leader claiming responsibility for whatever the state desired anyway, is true of other moves, such as the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Had Trump ordered that withdrawal, it would have be portrayed as a uniquely “Trumpian” move by the idiots who instead made apologies for it only because Biden did it.

What we see clearly shows that presidents are just opportunists and posers for photo ops, who have no real policy ideas and just claim ownership for whatever the permanently attached limpets and advisers from the military and intelligence junta are simply doing anyway.

The unelected state

The US state places no value in the American people, and everything it does is for the expansion of its own power at the nation's expense. The corrupt intelligence services who spied on their own people, and were exposed by Edward Snowden as crooks, were driven to protect themselves from the people. The most aggressive American policies, such as propaganda and torture, are devised not to help the American people but to protect the self-serving individuals in charge from embarrassment, overthrow or prosecution. We can see this from the pursuit of Julian Assange, whose only threat was to the careers of torturers and war criminals, and he will now be handed over to them for torture.

The real leaders, who govern by expertise rather than the approval of the public, really invent American policies and oversee them over decades.

The real leaders are the statist party of “professionals” who wander in and out of government, the press and think tanks, being respected wherever they go, regardless of the results of their ideas. Hapless elected officials act as empty suits for the junta’s agenda, showing no difference from each other except the manner of their words. This reduces democracy to a puppet show for the weak-minded, as the “professionals” purposely avoid standing for election and likely don't bother even voting, yet frequently mention the word "democracy" as deception.

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The best Elon could do to Twitter

Elon Musk seeks to own Twitter and make it a platform for free speech around the world. This certainly is not its reputation at the moment, although it seemed like it in the past.

Many of us (especially if we are at least 30 or older) remember a time when the internet was an experiment in anarchy, rather than a prison of control. It easily seems natural to us that the current extent of control and filtering of content on social networks is just an unwelcome anomaly in what should be the course of human progress to greater liberty and exposure.

Contrary to my wishes, as well as Elon Musk's, Noughties-style online freedom probably isn't really our destiny but just a historical blip. History indicates that any technologically-endowed freedom is likely to only ever be a fleeting thing before some authorities reassert the primacy of the law, but that pattern is a topic for another day.

Restoring Trump?

The political right has rallied around Musk's attempts to take over Twitter. They seem to see a way to get their beloved Donald Trump’s account restored, after so-called "Big Tech" exercised its power in favour of the Democratic Party by suspending his Twitter account towards the end of the 2020 US presidential election.

Whatever happens to Twitter is likely to serve interest groups in the United States, first and foremost the government itself. Although it likely remains the world's most politically influential website or application, Twitter has become little more than a channel for amplifying and rewarding views approved by or entirely constructed by United States government bodies. With time, it has increasingly  aligned with the US government on every issue and teamed up against regimes the US is targeting.

It has reached a point now that, if any other country is as vigilant as the United States about guarding against foreign political interference, such a country will ban Twitter without hesitation.

A dead end

Although Musk's ownership of Twitter may be beneficial to independent media and dissident voices, Twitter is dead. Despite retaining its influence as nothing more than inertia from a prior model under which it succeeded, almost all media stories that succeed there now are artificially boosted by the platform, and are from nauseatingly familiar sources.

Twitter is now little more than an aggregator for common American cable news channels, showcasing the content of such channels as its main attraction, as a way of recapturing the audiences that fled them and suppressing or banning other content wherever possible. Twitter may have, actually, been infiltrated by and bent to the will of journalists hellbent on restoring Iraq War-era levels of manipulation of the public.

The best Elon Musk ought to do is sabotage what Twitter has become, if he can, but the tech companies will never tolerate the return to the wilderness the internet once was. Immediately after Musk unblocks and unbans any content, there will be pressure on the app stores to remove Twitter. Following this, the platform will be effectively destroyed and fade into obscurity.

To set in motion the destruction of Twitter would wipe a stain from the internet, and be a huge favour from Elon Musk if it is achieved. Twitter, like most social networks, is no longer of any benefit to society or human relationships, being a false afterimage of former creativity.

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Keir Starmer's bad sell makes Tory sins forgivable

Keir Starmer recently pointed out that Boris Johnson is a liar and has broken the law, pitching himself once again as a more moral character, an alternative to Johnson.

This seems to be Starmer’s main platform now. He is not Boris Johnson, in the same way Biden’s platform was to not be Donald Trump. It represents, in some ways, our descent as a country into American levels of immaturity.

Protesting too much

Starmer does not commit himself to anything and has broken his pledges. He is in some ways worse than Boris Johnson, because he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any fault, which makes him more like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton than Johnson is. This is a type of person who sells his own moral character as his only redeeming quality, but that product is ultimately a dud.

Boris Johnson broke the law, but is paying penalties accordingly. As such, it is hard to agree with Starmer's calls that he should step down, much less that Starmer himself is the ideal replacement product. The reality is that we let people with power get away with some things, and it will be the same for Starmer if he becomes PM, and he would expect nothing less.

There is no reason to think that the loss of his job, even if it is the top job, is somehow also necessary. Johnson breaking lockdown rules did nothing to mismanage the country. If he did not mismanage the country, as appears to be the case from Starmer’s inability to locate the fault or give any argument other than saying the PM is a knave, then Starmer’s kind of political opposition really has nothing to offer.

Whose fault is this?

We are left with some questions.

Has politics and systemic political opposition in the UK become Americanised, to a point that it now focuses entirely on the character of the Prime Minister and the supposed alternative to him? Are we all going to vote for "not Boris" at the next general election, only to elect a plank of wood?

Whose fault is this deterioration, if it is so? The American political culture affects us, to a large part, thanks to a shared English-speaking media. People cannot be blamed, if their ability to think maturely about politics has been ruined by their consumption of American media and stupid debates that amount to nothing more than name-calling sessions.

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Trump's Truth Social network's ridiculous rule

Donald Trump's echo chamber app, Truth Social, which can be expected to be banned at some point in app stores, bans criticism of itself and probably of Donald Trump as well.

Not a good plan

My own view, expressed in an earlier post, was that this app might benefit Trump if it was introduced sometime around the next US presidential election as a means of creating publicity and controversy. However, it has instead started up just about now.

The companies that provide app stores don't allow people to download the other conservative alt-social media apps, such as Gab (which is a complete and utter nightmare of an app because of the lunatics using it, as I also explained in my earlier post). Sooner or later, Truth Social will just be banned too, making it no better.

More censorship

What is worse is the platform's apparent hypocrisy. Banning criticism of itself is about the most extreme a social media platform can go. It seems as if all this is just intended as personal revenge over Trump's Twitter account being removed.

Censorship should not be in the hands of companies and people who control them, such as Zuckerberg or Trump. Censorship is essentially a form of law enforcement action and should only be practiced based on the decisions of courts or orders handed down by government authorities, local or national.

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Trump's Truth Social app may fail, but affect election

Truth Social, the social media service being pursued by Donald Trump, is likely to meet with similar problems to other attempts to create conservative-friendly social media services.

What happens without moderation is horrific

I joined alternate social media site Gab for a couple of weeks, to try it out, before promptly closing my account after getting a thorough look at what kind of repulsive people use the site. The best analogy is that if Twitter is a park, Gab is a lunatic asylum where the inmates are able to leave their cells and do whatever they want. Judging by the small and ideologically restrictive user base, it is obvious that users have their own way of silencing people and keeping them off the site, in a way that is possibly worse and certainly more arbitrary than any algorithm on Twitter.

A site that allows the full range of human behaviours, including the very worst, might seem to encourage liberty. But when bullies have free reign, how much liberty can there be? It is arguable that when the next person is free to do whatever they want, including degrade you, you have less freedom. The low numbers of people signed up to Gab, despite being aware of it, speak volumes about its failed appeal as a social network and the fact the user experience is more coercive than on Twitter.

It has been reported that even doxing is allowed on Gab. Almost everyone on the site has some fringe far-right view, and the user base is so small that it is more like a membership database for the few deranged cultists and violent psychopaths in society rather than a social network.

Social media isn't meant for extremism

Gab isn't a social network in the proper sense. It doesn't connect people, as is the purpose of a social network. Accounts promoting bizarre ideologies, while receiving no engagement and responding to nothing, are common. It is like all the bad accounts and spam accounts on Twitter got removed and put somewhere where they can carry on talking in a cell with no audience.

We have to remember that social networks were really just created so people can carry on interacting in a virtual space. They aren't propaganda machines. Any website created to mimic Twitter but mobilise political armies is doomed to failure, since that was never the appeal or purpose of Twitter in the first place.

Despite its seemingly libertarian credentials, most of the user profiles I saw on Gab were neo-Nazis, and one was even calling for the restoration of slavery in America. So, in other words, those who most enjoy the supposed freedom offered by Gab are users who want to literally take other people's freedom away, and they are looking for a space where they can advocate such things?

Conservatives often doomed to get themselves silenced

This is a common problem with some conservatives in America. They seem to be always the first to make references to freedom of speech when theirs is curtailed in any way, and the first to call for someone else's to be taken off them if they don't like what they heard. Exactly as with many liberals, it doesn't take much to convince conservatives to express alarm at mere words and call for the words to be stopped.

Finally, let us turn to the topic at hand - Trump's social media app, called Truth Social. The only feature of this app, that will make people use it, will be Trump. The existence of a Trump account there will cause some significant influencers, journalists, et cetera, and their followers across the world, to sign up to it. There is potential there for some diversity of thought, certainly a lot more than Gab. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

However, if there is insufficient moderation of the content, the site will become overwhelmingly filled again with neo-Nazis and others posting extremist content and personal threats. If there is sufficient moderation, many conservatives will cry foul and not only leave the platform but could denounce Donald Trump in the process. As such, there is pressure to moderate it properly, and not moderate it properly, at the same time.

Why would Trump bother, if it is doomed?

What is certain is that the launch of the Truth Social app will probably have a significant effect and see a large spike in use if and when Donald Trump runs for president once again. Given that it may only be growing for a short time during such a campaign, and do well throughout it, its future decline will be unknown to us and its explosive success at the time will assist with Trump's chances of becoming president again.

It can be estimated that Truth Social will probably be banned from most app stores, including Apple's app store. It will be too controversial for business. However, even still, the "censorship" scandal associated with this and the fact people will still be able to make their way to the website will still have a positive effect on a hypothetical Trump campaign's performance.

To sum up, Truth Social will probably be a failure, especially if it is solely for political benefit and not as an actual social network with unique selling points and adequate moderation. If it is going to actually try to compete with Twitter and accommodate hard line conservatives kicked from Twitter, it will fail, but it could still have a positive effect on a hypothetical future Trump campaign. Whether that boosting effect on Trump's attempt to get re-elected will be decisive enough to return him to the White House remains to be seen.

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Can the US military be purged of "patriots"?

Warnings about disproportionate numbers of conservatives and Trump voters manning the US military have resulted in calls for a kind of purge by the Democrat-run administration. How will the state replace these most stalwart believers in the cause of American supremacy?

A shift of the American state and establishment to a liberal persuasion in recent years is the perception of American conservatives. It goes beyond simply the Democrats winning the 2020 election. The perception of that "deep state" hostile to conservative impulses was even more prominent while Trump was in office, as everyone with governing experience even on his own team and in the Republican Party rejected his politics.

"Deep state" is a misnomer by Trump's supporters, of course. Trump was checked not by the deep state, but by the state, and in broad daylight. He is unknowledgeable about governing, but this fact in itself is more a failure of democracy in America. A complete outsider can be elected, yet faced with utter disdain from the regime he leads, which is often a guarantee of ineffective government.

National security state targets its own fans as enemies

The legions of the religious right, who became Trump's base, were the "divisions", relied upon to win elections by those political forces who believed in a strong and aggressive America - the neoconservatives. Now, they have parted ways with the government institutions, so much so that most Republicans could be considered terrorists and enemies of the state by the Democrat administration.

Today, conservative activists are the designated main enemies of America, perpetrators of some trifle in 2020 that is stupidly declared by the administration to be a new Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attack. Things have changed significantly from the past configuration when the state relied on conservatives to support its crusades against enemies foreign and domestic, as they are now designated enemies themselves.

As an example of how things have changed, consider that it would have previously been unheard of for the right-wing "America first" crowd to sympathise with thorns in the state's side like Julian Assange. Now, they in fact support Assange, despite the fact that his one biggest service to the world was exposing crimes of US troops in a war launched by conservative Republicans.

The former zealots of American "peace through strength", whose votes kept that agenda in power, will be cast as enemies of the state for as long as Trump or their preferred Trumpian candidate is out of power. While this resentment may be subdued in the short-term by new Republican electoral victories, such as in the midterms, no such victory could make any difference to the growing gap between a conservative movement out of touch with governing and a governing elite out of touch with conservative masses.

Purging pro-military attitudes from the military

Defenders of the US military are, technically, extremists. They are prone to like firearms. As per America's very founding, these militants believe in using violence to achieve political goals. Every one of them could be banned from social media for violating the terms and conditions there, as could every member of every military branch in the world if they merely posted anything consistent with what they are trained to think and do.

The American military is still overfilled with conservatives, making the administration and its ideologues twitchy about disloyalty. However, to try to purge them would be like trying to purge the police of pro-police activists, or ensuring that more of the police's resources go towards arresting those who shout pro-police slogans.

The reason America's military is filled with conservatives is because it is a conservative institution. The cause of American military power has always been owned by conservative Republicans. Liberals and "nice" people who follow community guidelines to the letter are not prone to join organisations that are all about killing people and giving justifications for it. That entire domain of human interaction is, in America, something owned by conservatives and a key reason why they are loathed by their opponents in the first place.

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States versus social networks

Social networking websites and apps aim to manage almost every aspect of your life, curtail your access to information and take responsibility for your safety. In this regard, they are replacing government authority with their own. But when it comes to a clash with states, can they win?

As some background, Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly said at this year's Valdai forum that social media companies had attempted to take on some form of state-like authority and displace the state itself in this regard, and that they had failed. The remarks are quoted by Russian broadcaster RT.

Unfortunately, the source linked by RT is a more than three hour-long video with an English translation in which Putin does not seem to make the alleged remarks, so it is hard to tell what exactly he meant.

If the RT quote was valid, Putin may have said large tech companies tried to assume some roles traditionally held by governments, and the attempts were "fleeting". He would have claimed, "in the US, the owners of these platforms were taken down a peg or two as it was in Europe as well," with some clarity added that this was due to "anti-monopolisation measures".

So, what did Putin mean?

Antitrust laws

The European Union currently has the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on the cards, which apparently will prevent a tech company from trapping users in an operating system or bundle of apps that solely favours its own services (and by extension news feeds) over any other firm's. It also apparently hopes to make sure users can uninstall pre-installed apps, which presumably means preventing US digital giants from forcing European users to use their apps and look at their news feeds.

Antitrust lawsuits have already targeted large tech companies in the US and Australia, with Amazon and Apple often being in focus. Facebook has also had a hard time in Australia, where the government sought for Facebook to pay news outlets for their content and Facebook attempted to push back against the government with help from Alphabet (who own Google), by carrying out a news blackout. Back at the start of the year, the push from Facebook failed to deter the Australian government and in fact other governments took Australia's side.

Subduing African governments?

Social media companies are uniquely confrontational towards governments, lately seeing themselves as authorities on par with some governments. Silicon Valley-based corporations like Twitter certainly see themselves as more reliable and legitimate authorities than African governments, as can be seen from their enforcement actions targeting government accounts in Uganda and Ethiopia.

Twitter's removal of government communications because they promoted violence is an attempt to de-recognise a state, because the monopoly on the legal use of violence is a defining aspect of a state. It is also an ineffective and failed usurpation of the state's responsibilities, since a state can still commit or allow violence whether Twitter deletes posts about it or not.

Victory over Trump?

Some might consider the banning of Trump to be a victory of social media over the US state, but in reality Trump was always an outsider to the US state and it was the US state that defeated Trump. The other branches of the US government certainly hated Trump, as did a majority of lawmakers. The spectre of these state figures cracking down after the evident electoral defeat of Trump was the factor most responsible for compelling organisations like Twitter and Facebook to kick Trump off social media.

The behaviour of social networks certainly suggests they have or had a willingness to compel governments to do their bidding, yet they have been ineffective. The actions of Twitter in Africa have simply resulted in bans targeting the website. Governments have shown they are willing and capable of pushing back against what are really just weak outfits. Social networks can be forcibly broken up due to laws, taken offline or bankrupted by fines at any moment the state truly loses patience with them.

States as continuous victors

Whether or not Putin was actually making comments like the above or sought to discuss the above developments, I do not know. However, the reported observation that social networks are losing their battle with states is valid. There have been plenty of times when new media, organisations and other actors created upheaval in the internal and international order, but they are ultimately crushed under the tank-treads of whoever wields the real power. At this moment, that still means nation-states.

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