Clash Down Under: Australian Prime Minister Criticizes Elon Musk as ‘Arrogant Billionaire’ in Controversial Video Dispute

Elon Musk ​Clashes with Australian‍ Leader Over Social Media​ Censorship

Published 1 hour‍ ago

Australia’s Prime Minister has labeled Elon Musk as​ an​ “arrogant billionaire” amid a growing dispute regarding the refusal to remove footage of a recent church stabbing.

Following ⁤a ‍court order ‌on Monday, Mr. Musk’s social media company, previously​ known as Twitter, ⁣was instructed to conceal videos‌ of the Sydney attack that occurred last ​week.

Despite initial​ indications‌ of compliance “pending‌ a⁢ legal​ challenge,” tensions escalated when Mr. Musk utilized ⁣a meme to accuse⁣ the ‍government of censorship, prompting criticism from Prime ‌Minister Anthony Albanese.

In response, Mr. ​Albanese rebuked Mr. ‍Musk’s behavior, stating that he believes himself to be⁢ above both the ​law and common decency.

Last ​week, Australia’s eSafety⁣ Commissioner issued warnings to X and other ‌social ⁣media platforms, threatening ⁢substantial fines ⁢if they failed to remove the footage of the stabbing incident at the ‌Assyrian Christ⁣ the Good Shepherd church, which authorities ‍have⁣ classified as a terror ‍attack.

X has contested the directive, arguing that it falls outside the realm of Australian legislation. ​The commissioner pursued a court ⁤injunction after observing that X continued to allow international users access to the contentious content.

Expressing astonishment ‌at ⁢X’s non-compliance, ‌Mr. Albanese emphasized the ⁢importance of adhering‍ to social responsibility in the online sphere,‍ contrasting Mr. Musk’s ‌actions as lacking in such responsibility.

Mr. Musk’s online posts further fueled the conflict, with one message thanking the ⁢Prime Minister for acknowledging the platform as a beacon of truth, while another depicted a pathway ⁢to “freedom” adorned with the ‍X logo in a Wizard of ‌Oz-style analogy.

Additionally, Mr.‌ Musk targeted ⁤eSafety Commissioner⁢ Julie Inman ⁣Grant, personally criticizing her‍ as the “Australian censorship commissar,” ⁤a move that Mr. ‌Albanese defended against, asserting that she was safeguarding‍ the interests of Australians.

The injunction imposed‌ on‍ Monday will ‌remain ‍in effect until the conclusion of business on Wednesday, with a subsequent ⁤hearing scheduled to address the ongoing ‌dispute.⁣ Notably, X and the eSafety Commissioner are embroiled in separate legal proceedings concerning the platform’s alleged failure to⁤ disclose information‌ on its‌ protocols for detecting and removing online child abuse material.

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Sunday is dead at 76 years old, Terry Anderson, an American journalist who became well known between the 1980s and 1990s for being one of the Western hostages held in the Middle East for the longest time in contemporary history. Anderson was held prisoner by the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah for almost seven years, from March 16, 1985 to December 4, 1991, when he was the head of the local editorial office of Associated Press, one of the most famous and respected news agencies in the world. Even today he is the Western hostage longest held prisoner in Lebanon’s historya country in which a complicated civil war was being fought in those years.

Before and after his imprisonment, Anderson had a remarkable life. He had been hired by Associated Press after a career in the army, and in a few years he had managed to become the head of the local editorial office in Beirut, one of the most delicate and difficult positions at that time. Once released, Anderson never resumed being a journalist, but taught journalism at many universities, ran a bar, ran for the Ohio Senate (unsuccessfully), sued Iran for $100 million in damages, he got a part and lost almost all of it, so much so that in 2009 he ended up bankrupt.

Talking with Associated Press, his daughter Sulome Anderson said: «I last saw him a week ago, and the person I’m in a relationship with asked him if he still had anything left to do, if he had any desires left. He replied: “I have lived so much and done so many things, I am satisfied”». Anderson was kidnapped when Sulome was not yet born, and the two did not meet until she was 6 years old.

Anderson was born in 1947 in Lorain, Ohio. His father was a policeman, his mother worked as a waitress. After high school he enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he remained for six years working mainly as an internal journalist within the corps: he collected information and news both for internal publications and to give it to external journalists. It’s a role that exists in the Marines today again. After leaving the military he graduated in journalism and political science and was hired by Associated Presswho employed him as a correspondent in various African and Asian countries, before assigning him the direction of the local Beirut editorial office in 1983.

Anderson arrived in Lebanon in an extremely delicate period. The civil war had begun a few years earlier and violence between the various factions of Lebanese society was daily. Yet until the 1970s Lebanon had been the richest, most modern and secular country in the Middle East. It was even considered a model country, given that Sunni and Shiite Muslims (the two main orientations of Islam), Christians, as well as many other minorities coexisted peacefully within it.

However, Lebanon later ended up involved in the tensions and violence that were affecting other countries in the region, which began to finance and support the creation of ethnic militias within Lebanon to promote their own interests. Israel, for example, long supported Christian militias with an anti-Palestinian function (many Palestinians who fled the wars fought against the Israeli army in previous years lived in Lebanon).

Iran, on the other hand, has financed the Shiite militia Hezbollah since its birth, which was formed in 1982 to counter Israel. Even today, Hezbollah is one of the most powerful and influential organizations in Lebanon, and continues to receive money and political support from Iran. Precisely in 1982, Israel invaded part of Lebanon, and in September of the same year some Christian militias killed an unspecified number of Palestinian civilians and Lebanese Shiites in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, near Beirut, with the complicity of the Israeli army. It was one of the most serious civilian massacres ever to occur in the Middle East.

– Read also: What was the Sabra and Shatila massacre

The violence also involved dozens of Westerners who were in Lebanon for work, including diplomats, officials, members of the intelligence community, volunteers and journalists. the most active group in the kidnappings was by far Hezbollah, which captured them to put pressure on Western countries and obtain small and large concessions in the various phases of the war. One of the most famous cases of kidnapping involved William Francis Buckley, the then head of the CIA in Beirut. He was kidnapped on March 16, 1984 and died in captivity.

Anderson, however, was kidnapped on the morning of March 16, 1985. He had just played a tennis match with one of his colleagues from Associated Press, the photographer Don Mell, who he had brought home. Shortly after he left Mell, a group of armed men forcibly opened his car door and loaded Anderson into a Mercedes-Benz. The gunmen were members of Hezbollah. “For them, a person who went around asking questions in strange and dangerous places had to be a spy,” he told a local American newspaper years later.

Over the next six years, Anderson was held hostage in about twenty different places. He was beaten, kept in chains, tortured and left in almost total isolation for about a year. After his liberation he said he thought about suicide several times and found great comfort in reading the Bible. «I must have read it fifty times from beginning to end. He was a huge help to me.” tale.

It is unclear exactly why Anderson was held so long, much longer than other Western hostages. Associated Press writes that «according to the testimonies of Anderson himself and other hostages, Anderson was the most hostile among them: he constantly asked for better food and treatment, discussed religion and politics with his captors and taught the other hostages sign language and where to hide messages, so that they could communicate without being discovered.”

Marcel Fontaine, a French diplomat who for a time shared a cell with Anderson, said that in May 1988 Anderson thought he would be released soon because his captors made him see sunlight and eat a hamburger. He, however, remained a hostage for several more years. His condition had become a symbol: Reuters he recalls that his birthday, October 27, had become “the informal day in remembrance of the US citizens taken hostage”.

One of the people who worked hardest on the liberation of Anderson and more generally of the Western hostages kidnapped in Lebanon was his sister Peggy Say Andersonwho over the years advanced his cause by meeting, among others, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Terry Anderson with his sister Peggy Say Anderson photographed in December 1991 (AP Photo/Doug Mills)

In the mid-1980s, the US administration of Ronald Reagan, a Republican, tried to free Anderson and other US hostages with a complicated secret deal with Iran: the US sold weapons to Iran, which then had very few international allies and that on paper it was one of the most hostile countries to the United States, and in exchange Iran would have to put pressure on Hezbollah to release the hostages kidnapped in Lebanon. Among other things, the United States used money from arms sales to Iran to finance the anti-communist Contra militias fighting in Nicaragua, Central America. These chords were discovered in 1986 and over the years have become known as the Iran-Contra case.

Anderson was finally freed in 1991, under circumstances that were never fully clarified.

Anderson, left, hugs a colleague during a visit to the Washington office of the Associated Press on December 12, 1991, a few days after his release (AP Photo/Greg Gibson, File)

After his release, Anderson taught journalism at many universities including the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism in New York, remember il New York Times.

He subsequently embarked on a series of unsuccessful business ventures. He opened a live blues bar in Athens, a small town in southern Ohio. In 2004 she ran with the Democrats for the Ohio Senate: she lost by a few points against the Republican Joy Padgett, in a district where the Republicans have won continuously since 1977.

In 1999 he sued Iran in a court case reported by US newspapers they were very busy. Il New York Times He says he ultimately obtained about $26 million from Iranian assets located in the United States, which were purposely expropriated. After a series of bad investments, he ended up bankrupt in 2009.

After his release he had several mental health problems, and for many years he had no contact with his daughter Sulome. The two became closer only after she published a book in 2017, The Hostage’s Daughter, never translated into Italian, in which he told of his trips to Iran to better understand his father’s imprisonment, during which he also met one of the kidnappers. “She has become a better journalist than I ever was,” Anderson commented at the time.

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