“We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms,” wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on April 5 in a concurring opinion.Thomas was commenting on an earlier circuit court ruling which found that then-President Donald Trump could not block people on Twitter, because the comment threads on his tweets were a government forum, like a public government hearing held in a meeting room rented in a private hotel. “But it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it,” Thomas remarked, referring to Twitter’s banning Trump from the platform. Thomas traces the history of government regulation of private businesses open to the public: “Our legal system and its British predecessor have long subjected certain businesses, known as common carriers, to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers.” He cites an 1894 decision which held that telegraphs, because they “resemble railroad companies and other common carriers,” were “bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination.” Telegraph operators had special protection from defamation, since they were merely conveying someone else’s message. Should Congress demand that social media giants act as common carriers, as has been legislated for telephone companies? Thomas writes: “To the contrary, it has given digital platforms ‘immunity from certain types of suits,’ with respect to content they distribute [Section 230], but it has not imposed corresponding responsibilities, like nondiscrimination.” And are these companies truly private actors? Think about the pressure brought to bear on the numerous Congressional hearings into combatting “disinformation.” Thomas writes: “Although a ‘private entity is not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,’ it is if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.” Thomas concludes his concurrence: “The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him. But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smothered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves. As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition [which was declared moot], unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them.” Thomas’s opinion provides a much more thoughtful approach to these issues than did President Trump’s ill-conceived demands that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act be repealed.

In an interview with China Radio International on April 8th, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche spoke positively of yesterday’s phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. These are two important nations, and stability and progress are useful. Zepp-LaRouche expressed her agreement with Merkel’s opposition to the notion of blocs, which are a form of the geopolitical thinking that led to the two world wars of the 20th century. This stance by Merkel can have a positive impact on the rest of the EU.“Where would the world be as a whole, without the rise of China?” Zepp-LaRouche asked, pointing to the victory for mankind of bringing hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. China’s economic growth despite the Covid pandemic is an important positive development for the world. Although there is a mixed situation of China relations among the EU member states themselves, the situation with the EU bureaucracy in Brussels is that it unfortunately follows the policies of London and Washington, such as in imposing sanctions on China over Xinjiang. The EU is in a terrible state. It failed to handle the Covid crisis. It stands to gain significantly with cooperation with China. Some Europeans are still looking at China as though it were still in the Cultural Revolution, rather than after the results of the Reform and Opening Up. Since China does not pose a threat to Europe, why would Europe need the U.S. as a guarantor of its security? NATO is not providing for the security of Europe, but rather quite the opposite, by carrying out repeated troop exercises towards the borders of Russia. Confrontation is no path forward. On the Biden administration, Zepp-LaRouche said that she had seen nothing positive from the new U.S. administration with regard to Europe. Biden has continued sanctions against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Europe and is pushing Europe towards an alliance against Russia and China. Europe must support its own independence. A world health system is desperately needed, as new Covid variants emerge, possibly overcoming the immunity conferred by the vaccines already developed. This requires the necessary infrastructure to support health, and the urgent development of the underdeveloped parts of the world.

We must expose and defeat the anti-human, Malthusian depopulation agenda driving both the Great Reset/Green New Deal and the strategic escalations that could lead to military conflict, including nuclear conflict, between the U.S./NATO and China or Russia.A chasm separates the realization of worldwide economic development and the suicidal goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Both goals cannot be pursued at the same time, which is precisely why fanciful claims of climate change have been used to frighten people into adopting policies that would destroy the economic productivity required to support the growing world population at higher and higher living standards, and higher and higher capabilities to contribute to the development of the new scientific principles and technologies that are the kernel of wealth creation. As the IMF offers itself to play the role of “umpire,” to set such rules as the climate-adjusted price of coal—which it seeks to increase by nearly two orders of magnitude over the coming years—government officials in India are making clear statements that any such “goals” must take a back seat to the right of every country to develop. The kind of complacency that would allow a static division of the world into developed and underdeveloped sectors, or of people into the haves and the have-nots, is itself a problem to be overcome. As the world’s (financially) wealthiest people see their fortunes expand mightily under the bailout/Covid “relief” paradigm of the West’s central banks, some 150 million people are being thrown into extreme poverty, and hundreds of millions risk food insecurity. This must not be tolerated! In a Thursday appearance on a podcast at China Radio International, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded to a question about the April 7 phone call between Xi and Merkel, by speaking of the need for Europe to develop an independent strategic policy, rather than to see itself as a member of an anti-China or anti-Russia bloc. NATO’s unceasing exercises, continuing even under conditions of general Covid restrictions in Europe, have served to encircle and threaten Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union that NATO was created to defend against. Fighting and provocations in Ukraine are designed to draw Russia into armed conflict, as provocations around Taiwan are intended to exert similar strategic pressure on China. Meanwhile, the vaccines and health infrastructure required to bring the Covid pandemic to an end are largely unaddressed. The President of Namibia (which neighbors South Africa) has denounced current vaccine distributions as “apartheid.” Especially with the rise of new variants of concern, the pandemic—and vulnerability to future pandemics—can only be brought to a close through an enormous upgrading of vaccine and therapeutic production and of a health and physical infrastructure platform capable of sustaining healthy human life everywhere in the world. This is the renaissance in human civilization being driven by the Schiller Institute of the LaRouche movement.

What is going on in Ukraine? What is the Biden policy? What about Iran -- is there a new deal in the works? What about China's role, is extending the Belt-and-Road Initiative into southwest Asia the basis for ending the wars, and reconstructing the region? Will we ever get a return to Glass Steagall banking separation, or will the globalist bankers destroy what's left of the U.S. productive economy? And what should one make of the push, from the likes of Schumer, VP Harris, and libertarians, to legalize marijuana use?

We are just two weeks away from the Green New Deal summit, which the Biden administration is hosting on April 22-23 to try to get 40 heads of state to agree to commit collective economic suicide on the altar of carbon emission reduction. Can that Malthusian policy still be stopped? Yes—and then some. Participate in this week’s Fireside Chat to hear how India, Pakistan, China, and other nations have charted a totally different course, and how the U.S. can be brought on board. Think Mars.