This Week in the New Normal #90
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. UK Assisted Dying Law
The UK will almost certainly have legalised euthanasia by the end of the year, if not this government then it will be among the first acts of Sir Keir Starmer’s “progressive” administration after the general election.
The propaganda for this has been going and going and going for years, but it’s been a particularly hot-button issue for the last few months.
Here’s a particularly manipulative example from today’s Guardian:
Woman having assisted death calls for UK law change
It’s all about an unfortunate woman with terminal cancer who is waiting to die under New Zealand’s euthanasia law, she tells the paper the UK should:
“Look at what New Zealand has done, and do it even better. There is a lot of focus on the right to life, but people should have the right to a peaceful, gentle death.”
It’s hard to imagine how, given the last four years, anyone could aspire to be more like New Zealand. But then again I’m not a power-hungry autocrat striving to reshape the world into my own authoritarian hellscape.
It’s the worst kind of manipulative journalism, employing sentiment ahead of reason. As usual with the assisted dying debate, the media only talks about the benefits of the law and never the potential abuses.
Anyway, the assisted dying topic is begging for a longer piece and will get one, especially with a new post-Covid context. In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote about it years ago:
How long after the “right to die” law is passed will it stop being a “right” and start being a “duty”?
How long before people who don’t avail themselves of their right to die are deemed to be “wasting public money” or “putting a strain on the NHS”?
Will people have their pensions or other benefits halted for refusing to make the right “choice”?
The State already has too much power, and has shown that they will abuse it at every turn. Granting them more would be, in this case, literally suicidal.
2. Google is Watching
This week MSN (and others) reported on the story of K Renee, an author who was locked out of their Google Docs account for “inappropriate content”.
Renee is apparently a romance author known for “raunchy” stories, so it’s not hard to image what this inappropriate content was. As a result of the block, Renee is said to have lost over 200,000 words of work. As an author, I find that idea heartbreaking.
And nobody is really seeing how shocking this story is.
Not only is the Google Workspace service apparently monitoring what you write, it also claims the power to stop you writing it if it’s deemed “inappropriate”.
Is this content being flagged and read by human censors? Or is it all automated and AI-based?
Which is worse?
A reminder for all of us: Keep copies on your own non-clouded storage, preferably not connected to the internet. And keep hard copies if you can too.
3. Israel Bans Al Jazeera
This week Israel announced they would be banning the Qatar-funded news network Al Jazeera. This isn’t anything new as far as Israel is concerned, when you’ve already done war crimes and vaccine mandates, censorship is no big deal.
What’s rather surprising is that they were called out for it by “the West”.
The Washington Post ran a piece headlined:
Israel’s bans Al Jazeera, moves one step closer to autocracy”
Meanwhile, the German government tweeted:
A free and diverse press landscape is the cornerstone of every liberal democracy. In times of conflict especially, it is of crucial importance to protect the freedom of the press. The decision of the Israeli authorities to shut down #AlJazeera in Israel is the wrong signal.
— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) May 6, 2024
Stomach-turning hypocrisy from those outlets and nations who banned and prosecuted “covid misinformation” and the like.
Seems like the Israel heel turn is picking up pace. More on this during the week.
BONUS: Bizarre imagery of the week
A double helping of messaging this week. Here’s Apple’s latest ad for the new iPad:
Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create. pic.twitter.com/6PeGXNoKgG
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 7, 2024
It shows the destruction of musical instruments, paint and art materials, games and cameras and myriad articles of human expression and endeavour all replaced with a single digital proxy.
Apple – and Google and all the rest – want to put themselves between you and the world.
And this was Ireland’s Eurovision entry, presented without comment.
A literal Satanic ritual was performed in Ireland during the Eurovision semifinals.
Believe it or not, some people are saying this is just art.
What do you think? pic.twitter.com/kzhpUIPaJG
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) May 7, 2024
It’s not all bad…
It’s Mother’s Day for our American friends, and to mark the celebration of the primal love of motherhood, here is a tiny bird trying to protect its egg from a tractor that would crush her like a bug, with nothing but her wings…
Call your mom.
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention Viktor Orban shilling the “multi-polar world” or the eternal eating bugs bullshit.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
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