Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagMichael Cook

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Modern day slavery, illegal trade of human organs on the black market and forced organ harvesting of death row inmates concept theme with a liver, heart and kidney with price tags and a barcode

Organ Transplants: How the Internet Enables the Dark Side

Euthanasia activists offer to "ease" the donor organ shortage, and so do cartels that exploit the world’s most vulnerable poor
Africans are lured abroad in hopes of a job, maybe in high tech even, and it sometimes turns out that the job is — organ donor. Read More ›
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Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern

Jacinda Ardern’s War on Free Speech Always Deserved To Fail

Now researchers have shown why. The departing New Zealand Prime Minister claimed that “prolific misinformation” is a new weapon of war

This piece by MercatorNet editor Michael Cook (January 20, 2023) is reprinted with permission. In October last year, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, told the United Nations General Assembly that what the world needs is less free speech.   Well, not exactly that, but close enough. She pressed for vigorous censorship of the internet because “prolific misinformation” is a new weapon of war. “How do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble?” she asked. “How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists?” The prospect of government censorship of our views on climate change or the war in Ukraine is Read More ›

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newspaper on brown wooden table

Facebook Unfriends Australia, Blacks Out Critical News

It started as a trade dispute but the growing power of Big Social Media to impose news blackouts threatens freedom of information, even safety

Last week, in a business dispute with the government of Australia, Facebook wiped news from Australia from its 2.6 billion users’ feeds. Michael Cook (pictured), editor of Australia-based MercatorNet, explains what that meant: So when you checked your Facebook feed on February 18, you didn’t see anything from The Australian, The Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph or, initially, the Bureau of Meteorology, Western Australia’s Department of Fire and Emergency Services, Western Sydney Health, South Australia Health, various state health services and some state Governments. This is in the middle of the fire season and a Covid-19 pandemic, for which many people rely on Facebook for updates. You also didn’t see anything from MercatorNet or BioEdge, Read More ›

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Get Out of Jail Board Game Prison Free Escape

Prof: America Now Has Two Constitutions — Yours and Big Tech’s

People who are being debanked, depublished, and deplatformed are discovering that, whatever the Constitution says, they don’t have rights if Big Tech says they don’t

University of Texas prof Michael Lind (pictured), asks us to think about the growing problem of Big Tech power as if we were living in an old time film about a corrupt county: Imagine that you are a resident in a low-population county in 1950. You run afoul of the small group of families who are effectively in charge. Your political and legal rights are unimpaired. You are free to vote and you are free to sue in municipal and county and state courts. The police treat you with unfailing courtesy and respect. But strange things start to happen. The only newspaper in the county refuses to take ads for your business. The only bank in the county announces that Read More ›