The Weekly Weird #21

Hypocrisy Masterclass: Belgian mayor poops on speech, the Dutch ban cash, China's 'three warfares', EU rules on 'consent or pay', Uncle Sam is watching

Apr 18, 2024

Welcome back once again to your weekly walk through the haunted forest of dystopia! Don’t forget to bring breadcrumbs…

The Weird is 21! If weeks were years, the Weird could drink in any bar in the United States now, so thank you for supporting us.

Episode 111 with Professor George Church, on genetics and DNA, is out now, so make sure you check it out if you haven’t already.

It’s been an eventful week, so let’s crack on!

Hypocrisy Masterclass: Belgium Mayor Poops On Speech

Mark Twain once wrote “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

To paraphrase that great American author, suppose you were a hypocrite, and suppose you were the mayor of a neighbourhood in Brussels. But I repeat myself.

Meet Emir Kir, the mayor of Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, an area of the Brussels region in Belgium. Mr Kir is a long-serving Belgian politician of Turkish heritage. He became internet-famous on Tuesday for banning the National Conservatism Conference being held in his neighbourhood, and ordering the police to shut it down.

I did not leave in the sassy reply underneath by accident. More on that later.

BBC News reported on how the police were sent in to shut down the conference, where Suella Braverman, Viktor Orbàn, Nigel Farage, and Éric Zemmour were due to speak.

People were stopped from entering the National Conservatism Conference a few hours after it began, organisers said - although it continued for those inside.
The local mayor said he issued the order to ensure public security.

Some outlets used their headlines to paint a slightly different picture, such as EuroNews, with Brussels police shut down hard-right, nationalist gathering featuring Orbán, Farage and Braverman.

Nigel Farage slipped out of the conference after the closure order was served and people were blocked from entering, but before the police had shut it down completely, calling it “a discreet exit.”

In a brief comment to Sky News in the video above, he summed up his view on the shutdown.

“If you don’t agree with ever-closer union, you must be a bad dude.”

However, the assumption that the conference ban was handed down from a high-up Belgian or EU authority seems to have been too hasty and simplistic.

Belgium’s Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo, didn’t mince words in his response to the local politician’s ban:

The conference organisers stated their intention to challenge the ban in court, and after an urgent hearing, the court agreed that the shutdown was bogus.

As The Guardian reported on Wednesday morning:

Citing article 26 of the constitution of Belgium, which “grants everyone the right to assemble peacefully”, the court ruled that there was no evidence of a threat to public order from the event itself and that this seemed to be “derived purely from the reactions that its organisation might provoke among opponents”.

Paul Coleman, Executive Director of ADF International and one of the scheduled speakers at the conference, responded to the court’s ruling in the Catholic Herald:

In allowing the National Conservatism Conference to continue, the Administrative Court has come down on the side of basic human rights. While common sense and justice have prevailed, what happened yesterday is a dark mark on European democracy. No official should have the power to shut down free and peaceful assembly merely because he disagrees with what is being said. How can Brussels claim to be the heart of Europe if its officials only allow one side of the European conversation to be heard?
The kind of authoritarian censorship we have just witnessed belongs in the worst chapters of Europe’s history. Thankfully, the Court has acted swiftly to prevent the repression of our fundamental freedoms to both assembly and speech, thus protecting these essential characteristics of democracy for another day.

Let’s now revisit the instigator of the ban, Emir Kir, and his principled stand against the “far right.”

Emir Kir was a member of the Socialist Party in Belgium until he was expelled in 2020 because he welcomed and met with representatives of Turkey’s Nationalist Action (or Movement) Party (MHP), said to “espouse a militant and particularistic version of nationalism that is hostile to Turkey’s diverse ethnic - primarily Kurds - and religious groups.” The MHP is often called “far right” because of, among other factors, its links to the Grey Wolves, an “ultranationalist” paramilitary organisation whose motto is said to be “Your doctor will be a Turk, and your medicine will be Islam.”

The Daily Sabah reported on Kir’s expulsion from the Belgian Socialist Party:

Earlier in January (2020), Kır welcomed a number of Turkish mayors that had arrived in Brussels to attend the EU's Committee of the Regions meetings and make a number of courtesy visits to the offices of various European institutions. Following the visit, reports emerged in Belgian press that Kır had hosted "far-right" bodies, although the delegation was also comprised of mayors from the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).
A meeting with a member of MHP members also made headlines when Kır was visiting his family's hometown in Turkey.

Further adding to the hypocrisy, Kir, in an interview in 2003, was recorded as saying “the alleged Armenian genocide…” in relation to a monument, and, when questioned, confirmed that he didn’t agree with the use of the term “genocide” to describe what the Turks did to the Armenians in the early 1900s.

So the mayor who postured on social media as being opposed to the far right was booted out of his political party a few years back for associating with the far right, and toes the Turkish nationalist party line on the Armenian genocide. The irony, it burns so good.

Finally, let’s return to the sassy reply to Kir’s tweet about the ban, where it was pointed out that the Mayor of Tehran visited Brussels without issue. The mayor who welcomed Alireza Zakani last year was Philippe Close, not Emir Kir.

Euractiv covered the kerfuffle in June 2023:

Georges-Louis Bouchez, president of the Reformist Movement party (Renew), expressed himself against the Iranian mayors’ coming.
“Emir Kir was expelled from the Socialist Party for a meeting with two far-right Turkish mayors”, he said, reminding the recent case of a Belgian politician’s exclusion from his party because of a meeting. “What then can we conclude from Pascal Smet and Philippe Close’s [Brussels mayor] meeting with the mayor of Tehran whose extremism is beyond doubt?” he added.

Actual theocratic authoritarians? Roll out the red carpet. Eurosceptic politicians jawboning about national sovereignty? That’s a paddlin’.

The hypocrisy adds a poop, making this four out of five. 💩💩💩💩

The Dutch Ban Cash

If you are in the Netherlands, want to buy something worth more than €3,000, and want to use cash, you had better hurry. The Dutch cabinet is working on a bill to ban cash payments above €3,000, according to the government’s website.

The government advice to businesses on its website continues:

The government intends to ban cash payments for amounts of over €3,000. This ban applies to traders (professional or commercial buyers and vendors of goods). They are not allowed to avoid this amount by making several smaller payments in banknotes. This way it should be harder to launder illegal ('dirty') money.

So far, so typical in the war on cash.

When is the ban expected?

It is expected this change in the Act to combat money laundering and terrorist financing (Wet ter voorkoming witwassen en financieren van terrorisme, Wwft) will come into force on 31 March 2025.
Please note: The effective date of this measure is not yet final. Entry into force is subject to its passing through the upper and lower houses of parliament or proclamation of the Order in Council (Algemene Maatregel van Bestuur, AMvB) or ministerial decree and publication in the Staatsblad or the Staatscourant.

Fascinating. So there isn’t a bill yet, it hasn’t been seen or debated, let alone passed, but there is a specific date on which the government is aiming to have it in force? I’ve heard that they’re efficient in northern Europe, but that is next level.

To make it all the weirder, in 2022 the nation’s retailers committed to preserving the cash economy through a “Cash Covenant.”

CashEssentials reported in 2023:

In April 2022, twenty-three Dutch organisations involved in the payments system signed a Cash Covenant to ensure that cash continues to function correctly as a payment instrument in the face of a steady increase in electronic payments. The major Dutch banks, the Dutch Payments Association, representatives of consumers, retailers, the hospitality industry, petrol stations, cash services providers, and the DNB signed the agreement.
Following the signature of the Covenant, the Ministry of Finance and De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) commissioned a study by PwC Strategy& [in Dutch] on the future system for banknote and coin deposits and withdrawals for consumers and retailers, the so-called TICKET study. Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag presented the study’s results and a letter [in Dutch] to Parliament and concluded that legal intervention is needed to ensure that cash remains usable, available, accessible and affordable for users.

In 2023, the Dutch central bank declared that too many retailers were refusing to accept cash, were neglecting their commitment under the Cash Covenant, and as a result were making the economy less resilient.

From the NL Times:

Too many retailers in the Netherlands have stopped accepting cash payments, warned the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the country’s central bank. Refusing cash makes it more difficult for some people to make purchases, and the usability of coins and banknotes generally decreases as more and more retailers want to customers to use debit cards instead, the central bank said.
[…]
Retailers’ organizations joined hospitality businesses, petrol stations, other business sectors, the DNB, and Banks in agreeing to make efforts to keep cash payments possible. The so-called Cash Covenant was necessary because cash payments have become increasingly challenging. This is also because it is becoming more expensive for retailers to process cash payments, and the number of ATMs is declining.
At the time, the DNB warned of the negative consequences if cash were to disappear. In the event of a major malfunction in debit cards and other transaction systems, the lack of a cash option means there may not be a reliable alternative.

So, after studying the economy and concluding that cash is essential and that its acceptance needs to be mandated, and after soliciting a commitment from the nation’s businesses to continue accepting cash, and after the Dutch central bank sounded the alarm that not enough is being done to protect the cash economy and keep it alive, the Dutch government has decided to take another step towards killing off cash by banning its use in large transactions, citing the usual boogeyman of money-laundering.

Yeah, that tracks.

It is worth noting the case of India when it demonetised in 2016 (literally overnight, to catch out money launderers and black marketeers). The policy was based on the government’s certainty that there was rampant tax evasion, counterfeiting, and money laundering going on, so they cancelled the validity of large denomination bank notes and demanded that, to realise their value, citizens had to hand them in and exchange them for new ones. Anyone bringing in unusually large deposits would undergo an audit. After completing the process of managing the demonetisation, the Reserve Bank of India reported that 99.3% of the notes had been successfully received and registered, meaning that, at most, 0.7% of the money could be presumed as belonging to bad actors. Even that tiny amount of 0.7% might overstate the case, as it doesn’t account for forgetfulness, loss, or a misunderstanding of the rules.

India is the best example we have of a country fighting money laundering through demonetisation in a fast and targeted way. India also has a sweeping national biometric ID system in which every citizen needs an Aadhaar number to transact or register for financial services. Even in that heavily surveilled situation, using a ‘shock and awe’ method to prevent anyone from preparing in advance or finding a workaround, the maximum amount of cash that could even be suspected of being ill-gotten was only 0.7%. By the time the cost of the demonetisation was accounted for, in handling the exchange of old bills and issuing new ones, the government ended up losing money doing it.

As Economic Times reported in 2018:

Of the Rs 15.41 lakh crore worth Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in circulation on November 8, 2016, when the note ban was announced, notes worth Rs 15.31 lakh crore have been returned.
This meant just Rs 10,720 crore of the junked currency did not return to the banking system.

[…]
Post-demonetisation, RBI spent Rs 7,965 crore in 2016-17 on printing new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 and other denomination notes, more than double the Rs 3,421 crore spent in the previous year.

In 2017-18 (July 2017 to June 2018), it spent another Rs 4,912 crore on printing of currency, the annual report said.

NB: A lakh is one hundred thousand, and a crore is ten million (i.e. one hundred lakhs).

The Indian government spent Rs 12,877 crore over two years reissuing banknotes in order to cancel Rs 10,720 crore in currency that may not even have been related to anything untoward and was simply forgotten in attics and mattresses.

Bear that kind of self-harming ‘efficiency’ in mind when governments use the spectre of money laundering to justify taking away cash.

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China’s ‘Three Warfares’

ORF recently published an article about the ‘cognitive warfare’ being waged by China on the people of Taiwan, preparing them for ‘unification’ with the mainland.

For the uninitiated, the beef China has with Taiwan is quite straightforward. Mao’s communists were a revolutionary army unrecognised by the international community, so when they defeated Chang Kai-shek’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT) in 1949, the KMT who fled to the island of Taiwan were the official recognised government of the Republic of China. As a government-in-exile, they continued to use the name ‘Republic of China’ and claim legitimacy and sovereignty. The mainland, conquered by Mao’s communists, was renamed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and maintains a ‘One China’ policy in which only their communist regime is legitimate and Taiwan is therefore territorially theirs.

Taiwan doesn’t want to be part of the PRC, and the PRC doesn’t want Taiwan appearing to be independent. This is why you see Taiwanese competitors at sporting events described as representing ‘Chinese Taipei,’ a compromise reached between the two Chinese governments.

While a full-scale invasion of Taiwan may occur at some point, it would be expensive and difficult, especially with an unwelcoming civilian population. Therefore, a ‘nudge’ approach is required.

The author of the ORF article introduces the concept of ‘cognitive warfare’:

The strategy behind this form of warfare focuses on manipulating the human brain to win a war. The usage of this term has mostly been made in the context of China-Taiwan rivalry, where the Chinese strategy in the last few decades has shifted towards influence-based operations. This is because China has concluded that an immediate military intervention in Taiwan would be a costly affair.

This is rooted in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ‘three warfares’ doctrine.

From CIMSEC:

Consisting of public opinion warfare (舆论战), psychological warfare (心理战), and legal warfare (法律战), the three warfares have been critical components of China’s strategic approach in the South China Sea and beyond. In peacetime and wartime alike, the application of the three warfares is intended to control the prevailing discourse and influence perceptions in a way that advances China’s interests, while compromising the capability of opponents to respond.

As the United States wrestles with the influence of TikTok, and Europe wrings its hands over the integration of Chinese technology into key infrastructure, understanding China’s broader strategy in foreign relations is more important than ever.

More from CIMSEC, on the 2013 text outlining the ‘three warfares’ approach:

In particular, the text introduced the concept of huayuquan (话语权) through the use of information, belief, and mentality (信息一信仰一心智). Although, in more general or colloquial usage, the term might seem to imply the “right to speak” or “freedom of speech,” the quan (权) in this context apparently alludes not to rights (权利) but rather to power or authority (权力). In this regard, the concept refers to the capability to control the narrative in a given scenario and might therefore be translated as “discursive power.” To contest huayuaquan requires “the integrated usage” of public opinion warfare, legal warfare, and psychological warfare. These three warfare operations should be complementary and mutually reinforcing in future wars or in political and diplomatic struggle.

In 2014, an additional PLA text explained more.

At a basic level, the primary purpose of the three warfares is to influence and target the adversary’s psychology through the utilization of particular information and the media as “weapons.” In particular, the three warfares are seen as critical to increasing the PLA’s “soft power” (软实力) and contributing to its success in future wars. As warfare has evolved toward greater “informationization” (信息化), the three warfares have evidently achieved a “breakthrough” beyond their “traditional scope and model,” becoming an “organic” aspect of national strategy and warfare.

The recent dystopian film “Leave The World Behind",” co-produced by former US president Barack Obama, gave a taste of how citizens might experience a sudden interruption of normal life in an atmosphere of suspicion and doubt.

CIMSEC describes the PLA’s thinking on the functions of the ‘three warfares’:

In particular, the relevant functions include:
· control of public opinion (舆论控制)
· blunting an adversary’s determination (意志挫伤)
· transformation of emotion (情感转化)
· psychological guidance (心智诱导)
· collapse of (an adversary’s) organization (组织瓦解)
· psychological defense (心理防御)
· restriction through law (法律制约)
In more general terms, the primary missions are to seize the “decisive opportunity” (先机) for controlling public opinion, organize psychological offense and defense, engage in legal struggle, and fight for popular will and public opinion. Under the aegis of these missions, this requires efforts to unify military and civilian thinking, divide the enemy into factions, weaken the enemy’s combat power, and organize legal offensives.

From a 2023 article in the Japan Times:

According to an article published last August in the PLA Daily newspaper, cognitive warfare has become “an important tool in the game of great powers” as all parties strive to achieve political goals in a “relatively controlled manner.”
The article goes on to say that it is therefore not only “urgent” but also of “practical significance” for the PLA to gain insight into the characteristics and development of cognitive operations in order to “win future wars.”
This means the PLA is actively looking at cognitive operations as a new warfare domain, alongside land, maritime, air, cyber and spatial.

This focus on influencing how people are thinking, feeling, and reacting, as a pathway to affecting how they act outwardly, is not only directed at China’s adversaries or perceived unincorporated territories, like Taiwan and Hong Kong. ‘Cognitive warfare’ is also being directed at the PLA’s soldiers themselves.

EU Rules On ‘Consent Or Pay’

The European Data Protection Board has given its opinion on the so-called ‘consent or pay’ model for internet platforms, in which users are given an either-or choice between surrendering their personal data or paying a premium to keep it private.

An op-ed in Euronews described why a regulatory opinion is needed.

Meta’s "Pay or Okay" approach is its last-ditch effort to rationalise extensive commercial surveillance. Forcing people to pay for their privacy, however, is not providing them with a real consent choice.
The alternative to paying presented to users seems simple: just click "ok" — and agree to be subjected to tracking and profiling.

TechCrunch reported on how Meta has fallen foul of the EU’s privacy regulators.

A raft of complaints have been filed against Meta’s implementation of the pay-or-consent tactic since it launched the “no ads” subscription offer last fall. Additionally, in a notable step last month, the European Union opened a formal investigation into Meta’s tactic, seeking to find whether it breaches obligations that apply to Facebook and Instagram under the competition-focused Digital Markets Act (DMA). That probe remains ongoing.

The opinion of the EDPB is unequivocal:

The EDPB considers that offering only a paid alternative to services which involve the processing of personal data for behavioural advertising purposes should not be the default way forward for controllers. When developing alternatives, large online platforms should consider providing individuals with an ‘equivalent alternative’ that does not entail the payment of a fee. If controllers do opt to charge a fee for access to the ‘equivalent alternative’, they should give significant consideration to offering an additional alternative. This free alternative should be without behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving the processing of less or no personal data. This is a particularly important factor in the assessment of valid consent under the GDPR.

Yahoo News reported on the implications of the opinion, quoting the founder of noyb, a privacy rights nonprofit.

"Overall, Meta is out of options in the EU. It must now give users a genuine yes/no option for personalised advertising," said noyb's founder and chairman, Max Schrems, in a statement following Politico's report.
"[Meta] can still charge sites for reach, engage in contextual advertising and the like -- but tracking people for ads needs a clear 'yes' from users," Schrems added. He suggested a third option (i.e. not tracking, or not paying) could also, for example, entail Meta collecting revenue from sponsored posts or other types of paid content, just so long as there's no tracking or targeting of users involved.

A win for privacy advocates and a blow to Meta’s bottom line for now. We’ll see how things progress.

Uncle Sam Is Watching

The US House of Representatives has voted to continue spying on US citizens, “dashing hopes that Congress might finally put a stop to intelligence agencies’ warrantless surveillance of Americans’ emails, text messages and phone calls,” according to The Guardian.

From Wired:

The Section 702 program, authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was established more than a decade ago to legalize1 the government’s practice of forcing major telecommunications companies to eavesdrop on overseas calls in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Here’s America’s second-favourite nepo-baby President explaining why Uncle Sam needed to be up in your business without a warrant, back in 2008.

Back to the present passing of the bill.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon gave his blunt appraisal of the proposed extension (and expansion) of FISA surveillance powers.

From The Hill:

Section 702 empowers the nation’s intelligence agencies to spy only on noncitizens living abroad. But in the course of those operations, the government frequently sweeps up communications from Americans in contact with the foreigners under surveillance.
While those in favor of a warrant said it was necessary to protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, those opposed argued it was not legally required and would gut the bill, stopping law enforcement from acting on information in real time.

“Those in favour of a warrant” is a sad phrase that nails the way civil liberties protections and awareness have atrophied since the PATRIOT Act. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure and mandates the use of due process to obtain a warrant. To argue that a warrant is “not legally required” in a country governed by the Constitution is a show of either wilful ignorance or naked mendacity.

Is it inconvenient for law enforcement to have to go through due process? Sure. That’s why it protects citizens. Show me a country where law enforcement have friction-less access to the private data of citizens in real-time and I’ll show you a country in or on its way to a state of tyranny.

The House, while rejecting an amendment that would have required warrants, did pass an amendment changing a key definition.

From The Register:

This [amendment] changes the definition of electronic communications service provider, which previously covered traditional phone, email and internet companies. The revision can be used to force "any other service provider who has access to equipment that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications" to hand these communications over to the Feds, as well as "custodians" of these so-called service providers.
"We didn't see the text of this amendment until Thursday, for a Friday vote," Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told The Register.
"The focus was on the warrant rule, which obviously was a big deal, but this got lost in the shuffle. Redefining the definition of electronic service communication provider doesn't sound like a bad thing, but obviously is very broad in its reach."

Wired again on the implications of the broadened definition:

Marc Zwillinger, a private attorney who has twice appeared before the FISA Court of Review, wrote last week that the RISAA legislation expands the definition of “electronic communications service provider” (ECSR) to include data centers and commercial landlords—businesses, he says, that “merely have access to communications equipment in their physical space.” According to Zwillinger, RISAA may also ensnare anyone “with access to such facilities and equipment, including delivery personnel, cleaning contractors, and utilities providers.”

Wired also describes how Representative Jim Himes argued against the defeated amendment that would have added a warrant requirement - by threatening his colleagues (emphasis mine).

Members of the House Intelligence Community allied with the Biden White House and its spy agencies to defeat the amendment in what multiple House sources referred to as a “campaign of fear.” An hour before the vote on Friday, Himes openly threatened US lawmakers supporting the warrant requirement, claiming that if it passed, he’d ensure those lawmakers face the brunt of the blame in the wake of any future terrorist attacks.
“If we turn off the ability of the government to query US person data, the consequences will be known soon,” Himes said. “And we will audit why what happened happened. And accountability will be visited.”

Are you living outside the US and chuckling to yourself about those crazy Americans and their poor data protection rules? Fancy yourself beyond the reach of Uncle Sam’s digital scrying?

Think again:

Notably, the US does not recognize any foreign citizen abroad as having privacy rights, and US spy agencies may freely target them without congressional approval. The 702 program exists because the government relies on US businesses to implement its wiretaps and ensnares Americans’ communications in the process.

The Biden Administration has sanctified the ongoing drawing and quartering of privacy in the United States, as in its press release from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan about the House vote to kick the bill up to the Senate: “We applaud the House’s bipartisan passage of legislation to reauthorize one of our nation’s most critical intelligence authorities…We encourage the Senate to swiftly pass this bill before the authority expires on April 19.”

The US Senate is now all that stands between the American people and two (more) years of expanded warrantless surveillance. Cross your fingers that more than fifty senators remember the Fourth Amendment when they cast their vote, but don’t hold your breath.