New Zealand Angers Its Farmers By Proposing Taxing Cow Burps
from the how-about-that dept.
New Zealand's government on Tuesday proposed taxing the greenhouse gasses that farm animals make from burping and peeing as part of a plan to tackle climate change. From a report:
The government said the farm levy would be a world first, and that farmers should be able to recoup the cost by charging more for climate-friendly products. But farmers quickly condemned the plan. Federated Farmers, the industry's main lobby group, said the plan would "rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand" and see farms replaced with trees. Federated Farmers President Andrew Hoggard said farmers had been trying to work with the government for more than two years on an emissions reduction plan that wouldn't decrease food production.

"plateshutoverlock" wrote in message
news:133d3290-d62a-40a9-9adc-0f92a8ca8fd5n@googlegroups.com...
>
> New Zealand Angers Its Farmers By Proposing Taxing Cow Burps

This harpy is displaying all the personality traits of a head of state who's
been in power TOO LONG. Eventually they get the feeling that they're
omnipotent.

"During her time in office, Ardern has never shied away from openly
embracing authoritarianism. She denounced the free-market capitalism that
brought so much liberty and prosperity to the world as a 'blatant failure.'
Her government tried to largely disarm her subjects. It also stranded New
Zealand citizens overseas on the other side of borders sealed against them
out of fear of COVID-19. Inevitably, her government also cracked down on
anti-lockdown protests and proposed legislation to narrow the range of
acceptable debate under a 'hate speech'law."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Zealand P.M. Jacinda Ardern Peddles Government Censorship to an
International Audience

The world’s politicians offer a friendly reception to attacks on free
speech.

J.D. TUCCILLE
10.3.2022

With her luster dimming at home, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
is trying out her professional scold routine in front of a world audience,
perhaps preparing for a role at some international body. Key to that shift
is her belief that this whole free speech thing is a menace, and something
should be done about it, preferably around the globe. As it turns out, she
has a whole pro-censorship project ready to go for a career reboot after
electoral politics.

"A bullet takes a life. A bomb takes out a whole village. A lie online or
from a podium does not," Ardern told the U.N. General Assembly in September.
"But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts,
inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of
others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in
them. What then?"
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/united-nations-general-assembly-national-statement

"In Aotearoa New Zealand, we deeply value our right to protest," she
continued. "But that does not mean the absence of transparency,
expectations, or even rules. If we correctly identify what it is we are
trying to prevent. And surely we can start with violent extremism and
terrorist content online."

Her address then turned to promoting the Christchurch Call to Action, an
international initiative she co-founded with France's President Emmanuel
Macron with the goal "to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content
online," according to its founding document.
https://www.christchurchcall.com/
https://www.christchurchcall.com/about/christchurch-call-text/

At the U.N., Ardern briefly acknowledged free-speech concerns, before waving
them away as less important than the dangers of unregulated speech. By her
words, this category encompasses promotion of terrorism, undefined
extremism, disinformation, and also ideas the powers-that-be find
threatening.

"How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists?"
Ardern demanded of her audience. "How do you ensure the human rights of
others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric
and ideology?"

To combat these perils, she demands "international rules, norms, and
expectations" comparable to those applied in weapons control.

In case you were wondering, yes, the United States government did sign on to
the Christchurch Call for Action in May 2021. D.C.'s conduct since (and well
before) illustrates just why governments ought not be allowed to concern
themselves with speech that doesn't directly threaten harm to others.
https://www.state.gov/united-states-joins-christchurch-call-to-action-to-eliminate-terrorist-and-violent-extremist-content-online/

In recent months, federal authorities have issued advisories warning that a
taste for traditional Revolutionary War imagery such as the Gadsden flag may
indicate a tendency towards "violent extremism."
https://reason.com/2022/08/08/american-revolution-images-might-reveal-you-as-a-violent-extremist-says-the-fbi/

The Biden administration was repeatedly caught engaging in censorship by
proxy, leaning on social media companies to suppress "misinformation" and
viewpoints it didn't like, but which is protected against government action
by the First Amendment. https://tinyurl.com/y7zj63jh

"Government officials can use informal pressure—bullying, threatening, and
cajoling—to sway the decisions of private platforms and limit the
publication of disfavored speech," the Cato Institute's Will Duffield warned
last month. "The use of this informal pressure, known as jawboning, is
growing. Left unchecked, it threatens to become normalized as an
extraconstitutional method of speech regulation."
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/jawboning-against-speech

And there was the Department of Homeland Security's stillborn effort to
establish a Disinformation Governance Board tasked with distinguishing truth
from falsehoods (talk about foxes and henhouses).
https://tinyurl.com/2p8ktn3d

In places unshielded by the First Amendment, the situation is worse.

The U.K. is currently debating an Online Safety Bill that, if passed, will
let officials "directly silence user speech, and even imprison those who
publish messages that it doesn't like," according to the Electronic Frontier
Foundation.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/uks-online-safety-bill-attacks-free-speech-and-encryption
(The U.K. government supports the Christchurch Call for action.)
https://www.christchurchcall.com/our-community/countries-and-states/

The European Union adopted a Digital Services Act that "will most likely
result in a shrinking space for online expression, as social media companies
are incentivized to delete massive amounts of perfectly legal content,"
cautions Jacob Mchangama, executive director of Copenhagen-based
human-rights think tank Justitia. (The EU's European Commission supports the
Christchurch Call for Action.)

For its part, Germany's NetzDG law "conscripts social media companies into
governmental service as content regulators," Diana Lee wrote for Yale Law
School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. It has also inspired
copycat legislation in over a dozen countries. "In a global free speech race
to the bottom, the NetzDG matrix has been copy-pasted by authoritarian
states to provide cover and legitimacy for digital censorship and
repression," notes Justitia. (Germany's government supports the Christchurch
Call for Action.)

Many online companies, including Amazon, Meta, and Google, have also signed
on to Ardern's international censorship project. They either agree with its
sentiments, or else see the need to court regulators who might otherwise
make life difficult (remember the dangers of jawboning).

During her time in office, Ardern has never shied away from openly embracing
authoritarianism. She denounced the free-market capitalism that brought so
much liberty and prosperity to the world as a "blatant failure." Her
government tried to largely disarm her subjects. It also stranded New
Zealand citizens overseas on the other side of borders sealed against them
out of fear of COVID-19. Inevitably, her government also cracked down on
anti-lockdown protests and proposed legislation to narrow the range of
acceptable debate under a "hate speech" law. That prompted David Seymour,
leader of the opposition libertarian-leaning ACT party to tour the country
promoting free speech.

"Democracy and the ability to have civil and honest conversations is already
becoming imperiled, which is why this is the worst possible time to empower
lynch mobs who choose to take offence at ideas they don't support," Seymour
told reporters in April 2021.

While it's too early to predict any country's future political developments,
ACT is now rising in the polls while Ardern's Labour party falls. Jacinda
Ardern appears to be preparing to move on to new projects in life, and it's
rather obvious that will involve promoting global restrictions on speech,
with government officials choosing between truth and falsehood, and
designating what is fit for public discussion.

You can be confident that politicians in many countries will be more than
happy to hear that message, and to embrace any encouragement of tightened
censorship.

https://reason.com/2022/10/03/new-zealand-p-m-jacinda-ardern-peddles-government-censorship-to-an-international-audience/