This document is part of an archive of postings on Tongue Tied, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.

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"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" -- 1st amendment



August 29, 2024

‘Far-Right’ as an all-purpose term of abuse

The political world is full of baseless slurs uttered by historically and politically illiterate shock-jocks.

The current favourite is ‘far-right’.

Pretty much any crime against Woke will see you saddled with this slur. From querying Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ dream, to partaking in capitalism, to defending free speech… You’re ‘far-right’. You’re dangerous.

Dangerous to left-wing politics, maybe.

When it comes to the definition of ‘far-right’, the pillars of Western Civilisation serve as scaffolding while common sense and merit pad-out the walls.

There are so many Australians cosying up to ‘far-right’ ideas and political parties, that there’s a genuine concern this radical point of view will become the majority. Given how embarrassing it would be to the UniParty and its Green and Teal offshoots to have the Australian people leaning back into old-school values like prosperity and democracy, something has to be done.

Democracy isn’t working, so it has been decided to re-classify political dissent as ‘terrorism’.

What did the head of ASIO, Mike Burgess, have to say about extreme-right propaganda in 2021?

‘Extreme right-wing propaganda used Covid to portray governments as oppressors, and globalisation, multiculturalism, and democracy as flawed and failing.’

That seems a bit harsh. Is it really ‘far-right’ to oppose abusive governments and question their authoritarian methods? Is it ‘far-right’ to pick fault with globalism and multiculturalism? Well then… It must definitely be ‘far-right’ to see flaws in our democracy (unless you want to dismantle democracy entirely – then you’re a social justice warrior).

Mike Burgess continued:

‘So-called right-wing extremism has been in ASIO’s sights for many years … today’s ideological extremist is more likely to be motivated by a social or economic grievance than national socialism. More often than not, they are young, well-educated, articulate, and middle class – and not easily identified … ideological extremists are now more reactive to world events, such as Covid, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the recent American Presidential election.’

ASIO cannot define what they mean by ‘far-right’ because there is no ‘far-right’ movement, only a collection of citizens with different complaints about the government who feel as if they are not being listened to and so have aligned themselves with freedom-oriented political parties.

It’s not extremism or terror – unless you’re a member of the UniParty and you’re terrified about the next election.

Most of us would rather ASIO pay more attention to Islamic terror threats instead of chasing political shadows, especially in light of what’s been happening in Europe over the weekend.

Journalists are even more devoted to their fears of the ‘far-right’ – perhaps because they are tired of the masses using their free speech to criticise them on social media…

What – exactly – constitutes ‘extreme’ right-wing beliefs to those who toss the slur around?

One article said this:

‘These include an ideological commitment to: violent social revolution, a hatred of Islam and other forms of cultural diversity, homophobia, a deep suspicion of the democratic state, and a contorted exaltation of the principle ‘survival of the fittest’. There is also a deep hatred of nature and green-progressive politics.’

I beg your pardon?

Have you ever heard of your ‘far-right’ conservative friends plotting a violent social revolution? No. Neither have I. The people waving Australian flags, commemorating our sacred days, and demanding the government honour its heritage are hardly treading water in front of a revolution.

Parties such as One Nation want a restoration and a return to sanity.

The only people tossing statues aside and demanding ‘the colonies fall’ are on the left. They are the ones with red spray paint on their hands.

As for harbouring a hatred of green-progressive politics, yes, those who care about the environment tend to hate the idea of wind turbines clogging up our rainforests and corrupting our beach views. It takes a special kind of insanity to bulldoze nature at the behest of billion-dollar foreign companies and then claim you are the one who cares about green things.

We will not be gaslit by the left. They are not the caretakers of nature.

Also upsetting those on the left is the so-called far-right’s ‘nurturing of womanhood’. How the protection of womanhood has been repainted as a type of far-right evil is unclear. Should we not nurture womanhood? Or is womanhood still seen as a threat to the cold, impersonal order of a communist society…

The article further accuses parties, such as One Nation, of camouflaging their ‘far-right’ ideas under conventional or centrist policies. Sorry to disappoint, but One Nation says exactly what it means. If our polices or ideas are perceived to be ‘conventional’ or sensible – that is because they are.

And here is where the article’s argument against the ‘far-right’ becomes interesting, if not disturbing.

It takes particular offence at the protection of individual freedom and liberty.

‘Far-right politics exalt the individual as a “sovereign citizen” who should be permitted to determine his or her own life choices without interference by governments and their oppressive majorities,’ the authors complain.

Well, yes. Citizens are sovereign. They should be permitted to determine their own lives. The government should keep out of their way as much as possible.

‘Freedom is therefore conceived in terms of individual prosperity and power beyond any sense of social responsibility or justice.’

Yes, individual freedom to live, work, and succeed should be paramount otherwise citizens are merely slaves to the will of the State. One Nation believes that your life is your own, not the plaything of ideologues and activists.

‘Far-right ideology, specifically, creates a meaningful truth narrative which is deftly welded onto real or imagined grievances and social anxieties … the far-right narrative, therefore, is able to blame the government, the rule of law, outsiders, the state, and expert systems like medical science.’

Setting aside the political left being home to the largest and most costly grievance industry ever created, the idea that you cannot blame the government for policy mistakes is simply extraordinary.

Governments are both the curators and caretakers of society. Their errors, of which they have made many in recent history, filter down into catastrophes if left unchecked.

Mass migration from the third world, is absolutely a government policy error that has created very real and very difficult problems for citizens of which they very much should place blame directly on Albanese and the Labor Party.

I could go on, but the words of these authors condemn them sufficiently.

If ‘far-right’ means to put Australia first, to love Australia, to honour her history, to cherish her culture, and to stand up for the rights and liberties of every citizen – then alright. We are all ‘far-right’.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/far-right-or-just-right-about-everything/

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August 28, 2024

Zuckerberg admits Biden-Harris administration 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans

Facebook censored Covid-19 and election-related content under “repeated pressure” from the White House and FBI, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In an explosive admission that has far-reaching implications for US presidential elections, both in 2020 and 2024, Mr Zuckerberg apologised for his actions to stifle free speech and expression around the world – including political and medical content, as well as humour and satire.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee.

“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Mr Zuckerberg’s turnaround comes as Twitter/X’s “free speech absolutist” owner Elon Musk called for the release of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, arrested in France over unmoderated content on the privacy-focused app.

“Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but no arrest for Zuck, as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data,” Mr Musk said.

Mr Zuckerberg pointed to senior officials from the Biden-Harris administration and the White House for hounding his team for months in 2021 to take down Covid-related posts.

A year earlier, during the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Mr Zuckerberg said the FBI claimed there would be a Russian disinformation operation about Hunter Biden and Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In both instances, he said it was Facebook’s decision to remove content about Covid and a news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, published in The New York Post.

“It has since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Mr Zuckerberg.

Former president Trump claimed Mr Zuckerberg’s admission showed that the 2020 election “was rigged”.

“This is what everyone’s been waiting for,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social.

“Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!),” he added, confusing the fact he was still in the White House during the 2020 election.

Despite Mr Trump mixing up whether it was his White House as opposed to the FBI that pressured Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said the social media platform would not be playing a similar role in the 2024 election against Kamala Harris.

“I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he said.

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Facebook and the role its content moderation played in suppressing information during the 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Zuckerberg, who also donated almost $A500 million to finance local elections in 2020, said he does not plan to make similar contributions this year. He was heavily criticised over what became known as “Zuckerbucks”.

“They were designed to be nonpartisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities,” he said of his motives. “Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.”

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role.

Republicans’ House Judiciary Committee account on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, labelling it a “big win for free speech.”

The White House defended its actions during the pandemic, which killed more than a million people in the United States amid bitter political battles over vaccines and attempts to limit the spread of the virus.

“When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” a White House spokesman said Tuesday.

“We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/facebook-admits-mass-covid19-and-political-censorship/news-story/b501db6a7f4343e098e1bf7e239dea80

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August 27, 2024

Free Speech Victory for New York Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers

A federal district court ruled Thursday that pro-life pregnancy centers in New York may inform women “that the abortion pill reversal (‘APR’) protocol is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use, with her doctor, to reverse the effects of a first chemical abortion pill and thereby, help to save the life of her unborn child.”

District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction because the pregnancy centers are “likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment Free Speech claim, and they are suffering irreparable harm each day that their Constitutional freedoms are infringed.”

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, had initiated a civil enforcement action against 11 faith-based, pro-life pregnancy centers that were part of Heartbeat International to censor their speech, alleging that informing women about the APR protocol was “misleading advertising.”

In response to James, Alliance Defending Freedom challenged the constitutionality of her enforcement action in federal court, on behalf of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a pregnancy center network with 51 locations in the state, and two of its members, Gianna’s House and Options Care Center.

“Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers about using safe and effective progesterone for abortion pill reversal,” said Caleb Dalton, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel. “But the attorney general tried to deny women the opportunity to even hear about this lifesaving option.”

Elected abortion activists have sought to restrict pro-life pregnancy centers from offering the APR protocol, which literally reverses the work of a chemical abortion. In April 2023, the Colorado Legislature banned APR on similar grounds that it was ineffective. At first, the state agreed not to enforce that law, but a federal judge eventually enjoined the law in October on religious exercise grounds.

However, studies show that the APR protocol has saved the lives of over 5,000 unborn babies and has a success rate of up to 64%-68%.

“Many women regret their abortions, and some seek to stop the effects of abortion drugs before taking the second drug in the abortion drug process. Taking supplemental progesterone may give them a chance to save their baby’s life,” Dalton added. “Women should have the option to reconsider an abortion, and the pro-life pregnancy centers we represent in this case truthfully inform them about that choice.”

This is not the first time National Institute of Family and Life Advocates has gone to court over attempts by pro-abortion politicians to police its speech. Eight years ago, the pro-life network of pregnancy centers challenged a California law that would have required it to refer women for abortion, something that went against its deeply held religious beliefs. NIFLA’s opponents in the case were California Attorney General Kamala Harris and later California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, both Democrats.

In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in NIFLA v. Becerra that the California law did unconstitutionally compel the speech of the pro-life pregnancy centers.

Sinatra quoted NIFLA v. Becerra in his opinion. “Government, even with the purest of motives, may not substitute its judgment as to how best to speak for that of speakers and listeners; free and robust debate cannot thrive if directed by the government,” the judge wrote, citing another case. “And this is particularly true ‘in the fields of medicine and public health, where information can save lives.’ Nat’l Inst. Of Fam. & Life Advocs. V. Becerra.”

“Indeed, the ‘very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion,’” wrote Sinatra. “The First Amendment protects Plaintiffs’ right to speak freely about APR protocol and, more specifically, to say that it is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use in consultation with her doctor.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/26/free-speech-victory-for-new-york-pro-life-pregnancy-centers/

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August 26, 2024

Australia: Prominent conservative's explosive call to FIRE teachers for 'brainwashing' students by getting them to recite Welcome to Country speech

These rituals are "softening up" --  designed to entrench the idea that Aborigines have property rights beyond what other Australians have.  They are a prelude to "reparations"  -- Transferring to blacks money that  they have not earned

Pauline Hanson has demanded 'racist teachers' are sacked and banned for life for 'brainwashing' students with 'divisive' Acknowledgement of Country rituals.

The call comes as Daily Mail Australia can reveal every state school in the country is being officially urged to include the controversial ceremonies.

Primary school parents have reported they were stunned to see their children being forced to touch the ground and chant 'always was, always will be Aboriginal land' at the start of each school assembly.

In NSW, children as young as three are encouraged to take part in the ritual in taxpayer-funded pre-schools by declaring: 'Today we play and learn on [the local Indigenous people's] Country and pay our respects to our Elders past and present.'  

Senator Hanson told Daily Mail Australia she was 'disgusted' by the practice and called for heads to roll.

'These racist activists - teachers and lecturers - know what they're doing,' she said.

'The activists are now coming for our kids so they can try again with the new generation they've brainwashed.

Pauline Hanson has called for activist educators to be sacked and banned from teaching for life, accusing them of trying to 'brainwash' the next generation of Australians

'They're getting inside kids' heads as early as possible to program them. It has to stop.

'Any teacher who tries to indoctrinate children should be sacked and never allowed to teach in Australia again.

'Schools are for education, not indoctrination. Children should be taught how to think – critical thinking – not what to think.'

Each state education department offers strict guidelines regarding the inclusion of Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country rituals in the nation's taxpayer-funded schools.

Welcome to Country ceremonies - which can only be performed by appropriate Indigenous Elders - were considered essential at all significant primary and high school events.

Meanwhile, an Acknowledgements of Country - which 'can be conducted by anyone (children or adults) who wishes to pay their respect' - were encouraged as part of the daily curriculum.

Queensland has the strictest rules in place, with the state's education department insisting 'an Acknowledgement of Country is to be provided at all [Department of Education] events'.

This includes graduation and award ceremonies, festivals and event launches, major conferences, significant community forums, and school and venue openings.

The guidelines say the proclamation can also be included at school assemblies, sports days, parent and citizens' committee meetings and fetes.

A Welcome to Country is also mandatory at all major school events in South Australia, while 'an Acknowledgement of Country is optional at other events, meetings and forums, including school assemblies'.

In Victoria, the rituals extend into the classroom, with the state's education department advising 'schools are encouraged to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land at...assemblies, at the start of class, school council meetings and parent information sessions'.    

Western Australia's education department guidelines explained it 'supported' the inclusion of 'an Acknowledgement of Country at school assemblies, staff meetings and other internal events'.

Parents have told Daily Mail Australia that they were alarmed to find the ritual was now even being included in young children's birthday parties outside of school.

'I took my daughter to a friend's ninth birthday in Sydney's inner-west and all the kids had to participate in an Acknowledgement of Country,' one parent said.

'It was really strange - none of the children at the party were Indigenous - so it just seemed to be virtue signalling by the parents. It was surreal.'

Senator Hanson said she had told her grandson he did not have to participate in any of the rituals at this primary school.

'When my grandson told me he was being forced to touch the ground while reciting the divisive acknowledgment of country, I told him, "You don't have to do it; this is your land as well," and now he doesn't,' she said.

'I encourage all Australian families to do the same. They're your kids - not child soldiers press-ganged as cannon fodder in racist culture war.

'We must not allow future generations to be indoctrinated with racist divisions. Every Australian citizen born here or overseas has as much right to this land as anyone else.

'Most Australians have had enough of being told their country is not theirs.'  

The One Nation leader has also called for a wider ban of the practice in all public, taxpayer-funded settings.

'They’re recited at the beginning of every parliamentary sitting day, every council meeting, and every zoom meeting held by public servants,' she said.

'We hear them at the conclusion of every domestic flight – you can hear the groans in the cabin every time.

'That’s why One Nation last year moved to call for a ban on Welcomes to Country, calling for the promise of leading Voice to Parliament campaigner Marcia Langton to be fulfilled.

'It’s become meaningless and offensive. It’s an activist device, and a vehicle for the same racial division Australians overwhelmingly rejected at last year’s referendum.

'Australia belongs to all Australians, equally. That’s been my position since I first entered Parliament in 1996: equal rights for all, and special rights for none.'

Professor Langton is one of the key architects of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament proposal.

The respected writer last year predicted many Indigenous Australians would no longer participate in Welcome to Country ceremonies if the Voice to Parliament referendum was unsuccessful.

This past week, Prof Langton told Daily Mail Australia she was 'not available' to comment on whether there had been any reluctance or refusal to officiate the ceremonies as suggested.

But Indigenous affairs academic Anthony Dillon said the Welcome to Country and Acknowlegment of Country ceremonies had become so overused they had both become largely meaningless.

'I'm not a big fan of the Welcome to Country or the Acknowledgement of Country,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'They should be saved for special occasions. In the right circumstances, when done with sincerity, they can be powerful and beautiful.

'But unfortunately, they're overused and have become almost mandatory for any and every occasion.

'I've no problem with them being included in schools just so long as they don't get hijacked for political purposes and stretched into that whole "white man is bad, he must apologise" thing.

'If people want to do them at children's birthday parties, that's fine - I'd probably sit there and cringe a bit and, if they asked me, I'd say I wasn't into it - but that's up to the parents and its fairly harmless.     

'At the same time, I'm also not a fan of people who want to make this a big political issue. It's not.

'Instead, what we should be focusing on is getting kids in schools and communities cleaned up.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13763899/welcome-country-pauline-hanson-ban.html

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August 25, 2024

Was it necessary to send this Facebook poster to prison?

For what was essentially careless speech

Of the hundreds of people arrested in the wake of the riots, one in particular haunts my mind. It’s Julie Sweeney from Church Lawton in Cheshire. She’s a 53-year-old carer for her husband. And this week she was sentenced to 15 months in jail for writing an odious Facebook post while the riots were in full flow. Someone has to ask, and it might as well be me: who benefits from the imprisonment of this lady?

Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others

Make no mistake: what she wrote was wicked. In response to a Facebook post featuring a photo of people helping to repair the mosque in Southport after it was damaged by riotous bigots, Sweeney said: ‘It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.’ What a vile sentiment. That she thought it is bad enough; that she wrote it down and pressed publish is insane.

She committed a criminal offence. Some of us would like to liberalise the laws around ‘harmful communications’, to ensure that speech that is merely offensive, unwise or alarming is not policed too severely by the state. But the fact is that in the UK in 2024 it is against the law to make a statement as reckless and inciting as ‘blow the mosque up’. It was inevitable that the cops would come knocking for Ms Sweeney.

But a long custodial sentence? Apologies for sounding like a bleeding-heart liberal, but is this necessary? Sweeney has been a carer for her husband since 2015. She has never troubled the law before. She has led a ‘quiet, sheltered life’. She accepts her post was ‘stupid’ and in fact she deleted it not long after posting it. She pleaded guilty to the charge of sending a threatening communication.

Could her sentence not have been suspended? Could she not have been sent home to her husband and her ‘quiet, sheltered’ life, with certain conditions imposed by the court? For instance, she could have been instructed to stay off social media. But 15 months in a cell? For someone who, by all accounts, had a moment of madness online during an explosion of street disorder? ‘Thank you, your honour’, she said, as the judge condemned her to jail. This feels more like a tragedy than justice.

Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others. We’ve all seen gender crusaders say things like ‘Kill all Terfs’. ‘Decapitate Terfs’, said a banner at a pro-trans rally in Glasgow last year. A year on and Police Scotland insist the case is ‘still open’. Where was the uproar? It’s wrong to say violent-minded things about Muslims but okay to say them about women who believe in women’s rights? Two men have been charged with allegedly chanting about the massacre of Jews on the streets of London in 2021, and yet their trial has been delayed for years. No ‘swift justice’ there.

The post-riots climate is turning ugly. Yes, many of the rioters deserve stiff sentences, especially the weapon-wielding bigots who descended on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. But when I read about a 53-year-old carer being banged up for a gross post online, and a 13-year-old girl being convicted of violent disorder, and people getting jailtime for ‘dancing and gesticulating’ at a line of police officers, I can’t help but wonder if this is morphing into a judicial shaming of the lower orders.

Even more striking than the sentences themselves is the complete absence of concern from the activist class. Where are the civil-rights campaigners and left-wing voices who can usually be relied upon to ask ‘Is this a bit much?’ when tough sentences are handed down to certain communities? They asked that question after the 2011 riots. But now they’re schtum. Perhaps the ‘riff raff’ of Britain’s left-behind towns don’t tickle their sympathy bone as much as other sections of society do.

The riots were dreadful. No decent person denies that. Justice must be served. But the dearth of compassion in the aftermath of the riots is starting to feel a little unsettling, too. Here’s my plea for compassion: let Julie Sweeney go home. Wrecking a woman’s life and leaving her husband without care is too high a price to exact for a moment of bigoted lunacy online.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/was-it-necessary-to-send-this-facebook-poster-to-prison/

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August 22, 2024

Facebook removes pro-nuclear energy content

Dozens of Facebook users promoting pro-nuclear lobby group Nuclear for Australia’s content have had posts removed for being “misleading”, triggering claims some people are trying to “suppress vital information that could change the future of our country”.

Months out from the federal election – in which nuclear will be a key issue – and after anti-nuclear groups had their content blocked or accounts temporarily deleted across social media platforms, Nuclear for Australia has received 44 complaints from supporters who have had posts taken down.

The users had shared a ­Nuclear for Australia petition to legalise nuclear energy and a video interview between the organisation’s founder, Will Shackel, and businessman Dick Smith supporting the energy source in June and July.

But a Meta spokeswoman played down the issue, denying it had censored the two posts The Australian was able to share with it.

“Based on the information available, we believe the content was removed due to a technical error by our automated systems. The error was identified and fixed in late July and all impacted posts were reinstated,” the spokeswoman said.

Facebook users were told their posts were removed because “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way” and “your post goes against our community standards on spam”.

“We want you to share freely with others. We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe,” Meta says in an automated response.

Mr Shackel will email supporters on Wednesday asking for contributions to “help us bypass the roadblocks and bring the truth to light”.

“The truth about nuclear energy could transform Australia’s future but has been blocked from reaching the people who need to hear it most,” he says in a copy of the email.

“This isn’t just a minor inconvenience – it’s a clear indication of the political will of some to suppress vital information that could change the future of our country.”

Mr Smith, whose face and voice have been used in fraudulent ads online, said it was impossible for the government to legislate against removal of material but they needed to step in and treat Meta and other tech giants as publishers, ensuring they were liable for what they put on their platforms.

“You end up with this situation where they let through fraudulent ads run by criminal gangs but at the same time they delete genuine posts,” Mr Smith said.

Renew Economy, which posts clean energy news and analysis, had the same automated response from Meta as Nuclear for Australia did when a post sharing analysis by University of Queensland economist John Quiggin was removed on July 22.

The analysis was headlined “Czech nuclear deal shows CSIRO GenCost is too optimistic, and new nukes are hopelessly uneconomic” and found building two to four megawatt nuclear plants in Australia would “probably cost $50bn-$100bn, and not be complete until well into the 2040s”.

The Climate Council had a TikTok video hitting out at the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy taken down on July 21 for violating community guidelines of “integrity and authenticity”.

The video reappeared a few days later after a staff member appealed, saying the video was ­science-based and had been reviewed by researchers at the organisation prior to it going live.

The Climate Council says it understands TikTok pulls videos only after users lodge complaints and is investigating how many complaints it takes to get a post removed.

The Australian Conservation Foundation had its account on X suspended on July 22 for violating the social media platform’s rules “against evading suspension” after a user reported them.

The organisation appealed the decision and after the ACF made contact with an Australian-based employee at X, the account was switched back on that night.

ACF’s X profile was suspended for a second time on August 4 with no warning and was down for nearly two days, with the social media platform saying its account had been flagged as spam by mistake.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said at the time he didn’t always agree with the ACF but the suspension was “another outrageous example of social media trying to shut down voices for climate action”.

Mr Shackel posted on X: “Breaking: Australian Conservation Foundation has had its X account suspended. Perhaps the disinformation caught up with them …”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety was examining the influence and impacts of social media on Australian society, including how digital platforms influenced what Australians saw and heard online.

“Digital platforms have a range of community standards, terms of service and policies to support the integrity of the information and accounts on their platforms,” she said.

“Debate on matters of public interest is a hallmark of our democracy.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said social media platforms should not censor legitimate political debate, noting freedom of expression was fundamental to society.

“The last thing we need are digital giants telling us what we can and cannot say but the Albanese government sees things differently,” he said. “If its deeply flawed misinformation bill had become law, political censorship by big tech would have become rampant.”

Mr Bowen was approached for comment but his office referred The Australian to his previous remarks attacking the removal of Renew Economy’s Facebook post and the ACF’s X account.

Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said: “Labor and others should not rob Australians of their right to a mature conversation about the role zero-emissions nuclear energy could play in Australia as part of a balanced energy mix.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/facebook-removes-pronuclear-energy-content/news-story/03f0994c82eb006062be542a7898276f

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August 20, 2024

Colourblind test: the word that must be uncancelled

Last year, Australians rejected a referendum to establish an Indigenous voice by a margin of 20 percentage points. The referendum came four months after a similar decision in the United States: the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

Without overstating the similarity between Australia and the United States, both the referendum and the Supreme Court decision brought to light an ideological fault line that has existed in both countries for at least a half century: colourblindness or race-consciousness?

As I discuss in my book, The End of Race Politics, not seeing race is the surest way, these days, to signal that you are on the wrong side of this divide. Indeed, the term “colourblind” has become anathema in many circles, and if you live in elite institutions – universities, corporations, the mainstream media – the quickest way to demonstrate you just don’t get it is to say, “I don’t see colour” or “I was taught to treat everyone the same”.

Once considered a progressive attitude, colourblindness is now seen as backwards – a cheap surrender in the face of racism, at best; or a cover for deeply held racist beliefs, at worst.

But colourblindness is neither racist nor backwards. Properly understood, it is the belief that we should strive to treat people without regard to race in our personal lives and in our public policy.

Though it has roots in the Enlightenment, the colourblind principle was really developed during the fight against slavery and refined during the fight against segregation. It was not until after the civil rights movement achieved its greatest victories that colourblindness was abandoned by progressives, embraced by conservatives, and memory-holed by activist-scholars.

These activist-scholars have written a false history of colourblindness meant to delegitimise it. According to this story, colourblindness was not the motivating principle behind the anti-racist activism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

It was, instead, an idea concocted after the civil rights movement by reactionaries who needed a way to oppose progressive policies without sounding racist. Kimberlé Crenshaw, for instance, has criticised the “colourblind view of civil rights” that she alleges “developed in the neo-conservative ‘think tanks’ during the ’70s”.

Although this public relations campaign has been remarkably successful, it bears no relation to the truth. The earliest mentions of colourblindness come from Wendell Phillips, the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the man nicknamed “abolition’s golden trumpet”. In 1865, Phillips called for the creation of “a government colourblind”, by which he meant the total elimination of all laws that mentioned race.

In the decades that followed, the idea of colourblindness propelled the fight against Jim Crow. Exhibit A: the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson, in which the court – outrageously – ruled 7-1 that “separate-but-equal” was constitutional. The lone dissent in Plessy, the lone flicker of hope, which was written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, features the immortal sentence: “Our constitution is colourblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.”

Decades later, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Thurgood Marshall was battling segregation in the courts, an aide recalled that he considered the Plessy dissent his “bible” and would read aloud from it when he needed inspiration. “Our constitution is colourblind”, his favourite sentence, became the “basic creed” of the NAACP. Among the main goals of the civil rights movement was the elimination of laws and policies that used the category of race in any way.

In fact, that was the first demand made by the original March on Washington movement of the 1940s (which successfully pressured Franklin Roosevelt to integrate the defence industry). It was also the first argument made by the NAACP in its Brown v Board appellate brief.

To paint colourblindness as a reactionary or racist idea – rather than a key goal of the civil rights movement – requires ignoring the historical record.

Yet this is precisely what today’s most celebrated public intellectuals have done.

Ibram X. Kendi, MacArthur Genius and best-selling author of How to be an Anti-Racist, argues that “the most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a white ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one”. In Australia, opponents of the voice referendum were often labelled racist, even as they articulated a belief of equal treatment under the law.

Critics of colourblindness argue it lacks teeth in the fight against racism. If we are blind to race, they say, how can we see racism?

Robin DiAngelo, in her hugely successful 2018 book, White Fragility, sums up the colourblind strategy like this: “Pretend that we don’t see race, and racism will end.” But this argument is no more than a cheap language trick. It’s true we all see race. We can’t help it. What’s more, race can influence how we’re treated and how we treat others. In that sense, no one is truly colourblind.

But to interpret “colourblind” so literally is to misunderstand it – perhaps intentionally.

“Colourblind” is an expression like “warm-hearted”: it uses a physical metaphor to encapsulate an abstract idea. To describe a person as warm-hearted is not to say something about the temperature of that person’s heart, but about the kindness of his or her spirit. Similarly, to advocate for colourblindness is not to pretend you don’t notice colour. It is to endorse a principle: we should strive to treat people without regard to race, in our public policy and our private lives.

In the American context, that meant rejecting policies such as race-based affirmative action in college admissions. In Australia, that meant, among other things, voting no on the voice referendum.

Colourblindness is the best principle with which to govern a multiracial democracy. It is the best way to lower the temperature of racial conflict in the long run. It is the best way to fight the kind of racism that really matters. And it is the best way to orient your own attitude toward this nefarious concept we call race. We abandon colourblindness at our own peril.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/end-race-politics-lets-get-serious-about-embracing-colourblindness/news-story/d32a8ae6cc2985f57e5c7e076d6cd9c1

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August 18, 2024

Doctor under 'emergency' five year suspension finally goes to trial over social media posts

Melbourne doctor Jereth Kok was suspended under emergency provisions by the medical regulators in 2019 after two anonymous complaints triggered an investigation into his social media posts.

Neither complainant was a patient, and Dr Kok, 43, has never had a complaint made against him by a patient in his 15 year medical career, including ten years as a general practitioner (GP, equivalent of American PCP).

The posts reflected Dr Kok’s conservative Christian views on abortion, gender medicine and sexuality, raising questions over whether Australian medical practitioners are free to publicly express their religious views.

Five years later, Dr Kok finally stood trial in a five day hearing at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), held last month, with another hearing expected to be held later this year before the matter can be settled.

However, even if Dr Kok’s suspension is lifted, the five year process has already effectively ended his career.

”I think that the hurdles would just be insurmountable” he told me, listing the requirements to renew memberships, update his training, find a practice who will take him now that he has a black mark against his name, and the inevitable reeducation and practice conditions required by the regulator. “It’s been a defacto deregistration, hasn’t it?”

The process is the punishment

A spokesperson from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) said that, “Suspension is an interim action that can be taken by a national health profession board (National Board) or a tribunal to protect the public.”

AHPRA is the umbrella bureaucracy over the National Boards (medical, physiotherapy, nursing, dental and so on), which together regulate all registered health practitioners in Australia.

AHPRA did not provide an estimate of average suspension time, but said that “the length of the suspension will vary dependent on the individual circumstances of the matter.”

However, the regulators have come under criticism in recent years for slow walking this “interim” process, resulting in some doctors being sidelined without income for years without any avenue to defend themselves against the accusations levelled at them.

Shockingly, a study into distress caused by AHPRA’s complaints process found that 16 health practitioners took their own lives while subject to investigation between January 2018 to December 2021, with another four self-harming or attempting suicide.

Subjects complained of the stress caused by the excessively prolonged process, and the unfairness of ‘double standards’, where the time allowed for them to provide information was short, contrasted with long gaps in correspondence from AHPRA.

“It's a joke,” said Dr Kok. “I just don't see why it had to take this long. If you're going to use the emergency power, you can't then go and take five years to finish the process off. You've made it so difficult to ever come back to it that most people won't.”

Dr Kok described the experience as a "road test" for his faith. “I've had to rely on God through three years of unemployment, through the grief of suddenly losing contact with all my patients, and through being slandered,” said the married father of two.

As the sole income earner in his family, Dr Kok had to retrain and is now working in the software industry.

Dr Kok also worried about the impact on his patients, explaining that the “abrupt” nature of his suspension meant there was no opportunity for him to do a proper hand over for vulnerable patients with complex medical problems.

He recalled an elderly patient who he regularly visited in a nursing home telling him of her fear that he would leave her. Dr Kok said he felt “dreadful” when her fear was realised without him being allowed to contact her to explain what had happened or to say goodbye.

Dr Kok first found out he’d fallen afoul of AHPRA when he received a letter from the regulator the week before Christmas in 2018. The letter informed Dr Kok that he had been under investigation for nine months after an anonymous complaint was lodged against him in 2017 for comments he made online about the same sex marriage plebiscite.

Another anonymous complaint was made in 2019, this one relating to an article Dr Kok wrote, titled ‘A medical perspective on transgender,’ for Christian news site Eternity News, and other comments he’d made online. Following the second complaint, the Medical Board took immediate action to suspend Dr Kok’s medical registration.

“They are not alleging that I've done any harm in the clinic,” said Dr Kok, clarifying that the complaints and subsequent investigation focused solely on his online posts.

AHPRA launched a far reaching search into Dr Kok’s social media posts and online comments, commissioning forensic IT investigators Ferrier Hodgson to compile a dossier, at an estimated cost of $4,800-$6,000. Ferrier Hodgson also suggested subpoenaing Facebook for complete access to all posts made by Dr Kok from 2014 onwards.

In February 2020, Dr Kok unsuccessfully appealed his emergency suspension. He offered to sign undertaking to remove the offending posts and not to make any further online posts about contentious topics while the investigation was underway.

However, the Medical Board argued that this would not suffice because the “fundamental issue” was Dr Kok’s “character,” “values” and “views,” and what Dr Kok might have “already said to members of the community who might attend on him in his general practice, or the medical profession more generally.”

The Board’s barrister argued that Dr Kok’s suspension was therefore necessary for “public confidence,” but assured that that the investigation would be “concluded very quickly.”

Twenty two months later, in December 2021, Dr Kok was finally told that his case was being referred to the tribunal (similar to a court but less formal). By this time, AHPRA had added posts Dr Kok had made about Covid vaccines and restrictions to add to its brief.

Now, three years on from his referral to the tribunal, and five years since his initial suspension, Dr Kok has finally had the opportunity to defend himself against the regulators’ accusations.

On trial for ‘inflammatory’ social media posts

During his VCAT hearing last month, Dr Kok was accused of professional misconduct related to 85 social media posts and online comments he wrote between 2010 and 2021, including memes, and a sarcastic comment which the regulator took seriously. Most of the posts were made on Dr Kok’s social media network under private ‘friends and friends of friends’ settings.

In one post, Dr Kok highlighted the fact that the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was “derived from the desecration from a murdered human being,” referring to a cell line from an aborted foetus. Dr Kok believed this fact to be in the public interest, particularly for Christians, many of whom choose not to take medicines derived from aborted foetuses for religious reasons.

In a comment under an article on Christian website Culture Watch condemning the use of Australian aid money to fund family planning measures (including contraception and abortion) in Africa, Dr Kok sarcastically stated,

“Soon, our civilisations will be vanquished, and the Earth will be overrun by Black people. The solution is clear: we must take “family planning” to poor countries and exterminate them before it is too late!”

The regulator condemned the statement as a call for racial violence and genocide, an allegation that Dr Kok said was covered by medical news sites, resulting in him being “defamed.” However, Dr Kok told the tribunal, “I was simply echoing the point [the article] made,” that being that the aid is a form of genocide.

Several memes by U.S. conservative satirical site the Babylon Bee digging at gender ideology and Covid restrictions were also brought up in the hearing.

Medical journalist Heather Saxena, who attended several days of the VCAT hearing, reported the contents of some of Dr Kok’s other posts which were discussed in the hearing for AusDoc (here and here):

“…Dr Kok had described doctors who performed abortions as “butchers” and then added: “What’s wrong with capital punishment for serial contract killers?”

“Dr Kok also referenced the “industrial-scale massacre of babies by doctors,” called Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital the state’s “premier baby killing facility,” and claimed that doctors who performed gender reassignment surgery were “crooks engaged in mutilation.””

In another post, Dr Kok used the term “child abuse” in reference to same-sex couples with children.

Saxena reports that the Medical Board’s argument was not that any individual post constituted professional misconduct, but that in toto, Dr Kok’s language denigrated doctors and could discourage patients from discussing certain procedures with doctors. The board’s lawyer also argued that Dr Kok’s posts encouraged violence to racial groups and expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric.

During the hearing, Dr Kok conceded some of his language was “inflammatory” and “inappropriate,” such as calling abortion doctors “serial killers,” calling gender reassignment surgery “medical butchery,” and using the term “child abuse” in connection with same-sex families.

In his witness statement, Dr Kok said that some things he wrote “did amount to a denigration of other medical practitioners,” and that he would refrain from using such perjoratives in the future.

However, Dr Kok defended his religious convictions, maintaining his stance that marriage is for heterosexual couples only, that gender reassignment surgery is harmful and unethical, and that he does not condone abortion. Dr Kok also defended his long standing opposition to vaccine mandates, stating “I believe in patient autonomy ... to choose or decline treatment.”

Dr Kok’s barrister, Stephen Moloney, argued that “There is no law in this country that says [Dr Kok] is not allowed to say that abortion is morally wrong,” and that speaking on medical topics was a right “given unambiguously to the practitioner under the code of conduct.”

Dr Kok also rejected the Board’s assertion that his public stance on gender, abortion and sexuality would deter patients from seeking care.

“It might undermine their willingness to see me, but I’m not sure it would undermine their willingness to see other doctors,” he said, adding that if a patient asked him about abortion, he would refer them to a GP in his practice who provided abortion care.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-147356247

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August 15, 2024

Strange warning about speech from the EU

He has obviously never heard about the Peace of Westphalia  -- but I guess that 1648 is a long time ago

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has sent a letter to X CEO Elon Musk, warning him that his forthcoming conversation with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump could violate the EU Digital Services Act—an Orwellian piece of legislation that authorizes censorship of online content for the usual lying, humbug rationale that has now been normalized in what was once a civilization that valued free speech.

Underlying Commissioner Breton’s letter was his probability assessment that Elon Musk and Donald Trump would, in their conversation, promote hatred, disorder, and incitement to violence. Based on his probability assessment, Breton took it upon himself to warn Musk and Trump that they needed to exercise due diligence in making sure that they did not indulge in such speech.

Given that Breton is not, like Kamala Harris, suffering from a lack of native intelligence, it appears that he has been seized by the Dummheit syndrome described by Bonhoeffer. His letter to Elon Musk may be the stupidest thing I’ve read all year. Given the moronic deluge that pours from the world’s capitals these days, this is really saying something.

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/eu-commissioner-makes-fool-of-himself

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August 14, 2024

Richard Dawkins’s Facebook Account Deleted After He Posted that Genetically Male Boxers Should Not Fight Women

Richard Dawkins’s Facebook account has been deleted after he posted that genetically male boxers should not fight women. The famous evolutionary biologist posted on X this morning about the shocking censorship, writing that while no reason was given for the sudden removal of the account, it seems to be linked to a post in which he’d written that “genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics”. Dawkins’s tweet has so far been viewed over 10 million times.

Does anything sum up more perfectly the dire state of free speech today than an eminent biologist being kicked off a major social media platform for stating the plain implications of a biological fact?

https://dailysceptic.org/2024/08/10/richard-dawkinss-facebook-account-deleted-after-he-posted-that-genetically-male-boxers-should-not-fight-women/

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August 13, 2024

‘It’s taken six months and $100,000 in legal costs to clear my name’

Her research into late-term abortions provoked controversy.  It provoked complaints  even though it was perfectly scholarly.  Her  university's response to the complaints was a series of oppressive "investigations" which eventually attempted to penalize her


In 1964, Robert Menzies gave a speech at the University of NSW defending academic freedom and the pursuit of truth in all areas of human endeavour as a fundamental principle for Australian universities.

“It is of the most vital importance for human progress in all fields of knowledge that the highest encouragement should be given to untrammelled research, to the vigorous pursuit of truth, however unorthodox it may seem,” the prime minister said.

Law professor Joanna Howe is claiming a modern-day victory for this ideal after securing a breakthrough in the Fair Work Commission case she brought against her employer, the University of Adelaide.

Howe argues she has secured a win for academic freedom at a key moment for Australian universities given a new age of political polarisation, campus cancel culture and an elevated focus on the protection of students from content they may find offensive.

In June, she lodged a stop bullying application against the university with the industrial umpire and sought the removal of the corrective actions imposed on her. But this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Across a period of 4½ years, Howe endured six investigations conducted by the university as a result of complaints made against her research into the politically contentious topic of abortion.

While Howe was cleared by all of the investigations, the sixth to be conducted by the university required her to complete a research integrity course within 30 days. The aim was to provide further education on how not to do biased research.

This corrective action was imposed on Howe despite the investigation dismissing allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation of facts in a submission she made to a parliamentary inquiry in South Australia. The investigation found there was no breach of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. Howe fought against the requirement to complete the online re-education course, but the battle took a heavy personal and financial took.

After first being notified of the complaint against her on January 24, Howe spent more than half a year dealing with and responding to the investigation process. She racked up legal costs of nearly $100,000 in her bid to resolve the dispute.

“I appealed internally on four occasions and was never given any reason for why my appeals were rejected or corrective actions were imposed,” she tells Inquirer. “My appeals raised serious concerns with the university’s failure to follow its own procedures, including the requirement to dismiss complaints that were made vexatiously or in bad faith. Every time my appeals fell on deaf ears.”

An FWC conciliation process now has produced an agreed statement between both parties making clear that the university accepted commissioner Christopher Platt’s recommendation “not to require Professor Howe to comply with the corrective actions and that no further action will be taken in this matter”.

“The parties have agreed on a process regarding the investigation of complaints moving forward,” the statement says.

“The University of Adelaide supports academic freedom, as reflected in its Enterprise Agreement 2023–2025 and its Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom Policy.”

Following the resolution of the dispute, Howe has embarked on a fresh campaign to have a new process for the dismissal of bad-faith complaints adopted more broadly across the nation’s universities. She sees the reform as a key instrument for the defence of academic freedom.

In a letter sent to Universities Australia chairman David Lloyd on Friday, Howe says the “ability to research and speak out in areas that are unpopular or controversial benefits the whole community in our pursuit of truth”.

“While I accept that complaints are par for the course if one is researching in an area of controversy, what I do not accept is the choice by universities to investigate complaints that are made vexatiously or in bad faith,” she says.

“This choice, as I know all too well, places researchers under an unfair and unreasonable spotlight and distracts them from pursuing their research.”

Howe’s research has subjected her not only to criticism of her work but also personal attack across several years – including the release by activists of her place of work and family.

Since 2017, Howe has researched abortion in Australia including its different methods, the regulation and incidence of sex-selective abortion, the regulation and incidence of abortion after viability – known as late-term abortion – and the regulation and incidence of babies born alive after an abortion.

In 2021, she began research on the regulation of prostitution, including an examination of the merits of full decriminalisation of prostitution versus a partial decriminalisation model.

Howe’s primary field of research, however, has been at the intersection of labour law and migration law and in this field she is regarded as one of the nation’s leading experts. She holds a doctorate of philosophy in law from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes scholar, and is the author and co-editor of three books.

In 2022 she was hand-picked by the Labor government to help lead the migration review headed by former top public servant Martin Parkinson that was delivered in March last year.

In her letter to Lloyd, Howe has made the following proposal: “I am requesting that Universities Australia work with the sector to introduce a new, specific requirement to mandatorily dismiss complaints which are made vexatiously or in bad faith about the research or conduct of academics.

“This simple yet significant reform would help free scholars who research in areas of controversy from the threat of being under constant scrutiny and investigation.”

Howe tells Inquirer the outcome at the conciliation in the FWC was “a significant victory for academic freedom but it’s a fight I never should have had to take on”.

“No one should have to go through what I have been through just to fight for the freedom to research and speak,” she says. “It should not have taken me six months … and nearly $100,000 in legal costs to clear my name.

“This outcome at conciliation confirms I was right to not submit to the university’s attempt at re-education by forcing me to do an anti-bias course.”

The complaints

Between November 25, 2019, and May 2 this year, the University of Adelaide undertook six investigations into Howe’s scholarship because of complaints – five of which were made within an 18-month period from July 2022. The wave of complaints from July 2022 came after Howe started to promote her research online, including on her website and on social media, to make it more accessible to a general audience.

Howe says this exposed her to harassment, verbal abuse and repeated threats to her employment. She was targeted in particular by individuals and activists from pro-sex work and pro-abortion organisations.

This resulted in several complaints from TikTok activists who accused Howe of misrepresenting facts for saying that abortion was legal in Australia up to birth and that the procedure was not limited only to life-threatening situations or where there was the prospect of serious congenital abnormality.

Howe has researched, collected and promoted data on the incidence of late-term abortions including those conducted for psychosocial reasons or in ins­tances where healthy babies had medical abnormalities that could have been medically or surgically corrected.

“Having been subject to five investigations in two years because of the controversial nature of my research has substantially impacted and undermined my academic freedom to research and advocate on abortion from a critical perspective,” she tells Inquirer.

The sixth complaint

The sixth investigation related to a submission Howe made to a parliamentary inquiry in South Australia. The complaint was made by a TikTok and Instagram activist, whom The Australian has not named, over allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation in Howe’s submission.

Howe has strongly criticised the university’s handling of this complaint. She argues it made several errors that denied her procedural fairness.

First, while being notified in a January 24 letter from the university that a sixth investigation was being conducted into her, the letter did not identify the specific allegations being made against Howe’s research.

Howe was unable to provide responses to the allegations until February 14, after she had inquired a second time to discover their substance.

Second, the university’s preliminary assessment concluded in March that there was no breach of the Australian Code of Conduct for Responsible Research. But it did find there was a “minor departure from accepted academic practice in terms of appropriate citation and representation of primary sources”.

The assessment officer did not recommend any corrective action but, despite this, the university’s formal determination was for Howe to complete an online research integrity course within 30 days – a requirement imposed on her on May 2.

Third, the individual who made the complaint against Howe was notified by the University of Adelaide of its determination that the “complaint be resolved at the local level with corrective actions”.

The university neglected to mention that the allegations of plagiarism and misrepresentation had not been substantiated or that Howe was not in breach of the Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

“The university’s correspondence with the TikTok activist who made the original complaint in the fifth investigation was appalling,” Howe tells Inquirer. “It did not state that the investigation found I had not breached the Australian Code of Conduct for Responsible Research but stated that corrective actions had been imposed, which led to the complainant publicly releasing this letter.

“This led to a torrent of online abuse as pro-abortion trolls and activists harassed me and erroneously claimed that I had been found guilty of misconduct and that the university had ordered me to unpublish my research report.

“Neither had happened and yet the university refused to clear my name.”

Fourth, Howe appealed on four occasions within the university against its handling of the matter.

“My appeals raised serious concerns with the university’s failure to follow its own procedures, including the requirement to dismiss complaints that were made vexatiously or in bad faith,” she says.

“I raised concerns around a serious conflict of interest with respect to the responsible designated officer for my case.”

Howe has argued that the university failed to comply with its policy on academic freedom and that pro-abortion scholarship by others at the university was not held to the same standard. She says pro-abortion scholars also had diverted from best practice when citing primary sources on several occasions but had faced no consequences.

A new pathway

In a bid to ensure that important research at Australian universities is not stymied because of a stream of bad-faith complaints targeting individual academics, Howe is now urging Universities Australia to implement broader reforms to uphold academic freedom.

In her letter to Lloyd, obtained by Inquirer, Howe argues that universities should apply a common standard allowing them to “automatically” dismiss bad-faith or vexatious complaints.

This would include adopting common definitions of vexatious and bad faith.

Howe suggests definitions for both and says universities should bear several factors in mind when assessing whether the complaints meet those definitions.

She says universities should consider the reality of “differing views in relation to controversial research topics” and “whether the complaint has been brought with an ulterior motive and not in good faith by reason of these different views”.

In addition, universities should consider the need to uphold the “right of scholars to academic freedom, freedom of speech and health and safety”.

However, she also says the “designation of a complaint as being made vexatiously or in bad faith” should not be taken at the discretion of university management.

Howe says there is a growing urgency to the reform blueprint.

“This requirement to automatically dismiss complaints that are found to be vexatious or in bad faith is necessary given the central importance of academic freedom, recognised by the High Court in Peter Ridd v James Cook University and in the French Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers,” Howe says.

“I urge Universities Australia to consider this modest proposal to ensure better protection of academ­ic freedom and free speech across the higher education sector.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/its-taken-six-months-and-100000-in-legal-costs-to-clear-my-name/news-story/7bde4e2daa5c87b91a6fd8704eca2b1b

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August 12, 2024

Elon Musk is right, freedom of speech in the UK is under attack

Elon Musk has captured headlines in the UK this week by taking our Prime Minister to task over his crackdown on free speech in the UK.

Just one month into our new Labour government, people are being arrested and jailed over retweeting or tweeting information surrounding the riots that we have seen. Our government even released a UK warning to X (formally Twitter) to, ‘Think before you post!’ shortly after a 55-year-old woman was arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation.

In addition to that, our Courts in Belfast said that people would be arrested and denied bail simply for being a ‘curious observer’ in the protests, even if you didn’t take part. The Judge said:

‘Anybody involving themselves in this type of behaviour, this type of disorder, be an active participant or a curious observer can expect to be, save for the most exceptional circumstances, remanded into custody, and this defendant is remanded into custody.’

This is essentially saying that you could be arrested and denied bail for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A woman in Leeds was also arrested for allegedly giving the police ice lollies at the riot to thank them.

Whilst people are getting arrested for tweets and retweets, ‘observing protests’, or bringing ice lollies, the two men who are alleged to have broken a female police officer’s nose in Manchester airport – are still on bail. The UK government is planning to release up to 40,000 prisoners, a number of whom are rather dangerous, to make space … space for those they are planning to arrest for thought crimes? It is a fair question.

In addition to this, the government has decided to axe the ‘Higher Education freedom of speech bill’ that was introduced by our previous Conservative government to protect free speech on campus. No doubt allowing and encouraging more cancellations and de-platforming at our universities.

This crackdown on free speech is frankly terrifying. The UK is fast descending into authoritarianism under Keir Jong-un’s leadership and we need people like myself, yourself and Elon Musk, to fight for free speech in the UK.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/elon-musk-is-right-freedom-of-speech-in-the-uk-is-under-attack/

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August 11, 2024

Coping with Google censorship

Google have now wiped out two of my blogs: "Australian Politics" and "The Psychologist". Both apparently provided "misinformation" about Covid.

There is not a great amount I need to do about "Australian Politics". It continues to appear in my backups so can still be read by anyone interested. Access it here:

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html

I will not however put up on it any more posts about Covid. I will reserve all posts about Covid for "Covid Watch":

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html

I was going to ignore their demolition of "The Psychologist" but I have decided on putting up a partial replacement called "Select Posts"

http://jonjayray.com/select.html

It will not be updated daily but will cover what I think are my more significant blog comments. It too will not post about Covid

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August 08, 2024

Free speech stops riots

Toby Young comments on the present widespread political riots in Britain:

With depressing predictability, the riots have led to calls for more censorship. Historically, it was the authoritarian right who blamed outbreaks of civil disorder on too much free speech, but this knee-jerk, illiberal reaction is now more likely to be found on the left. I’m not just thinking of Paul Mason, who called for Ofcom to revoke GB News’s broadcast licence, or even Carole Cadwalladr, who tweeted: ‘This should be our Dunblane moment. Only with social media not guns.’ I’m thinking of statements by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary.

Is Sir Keir going to urge the police to investigate his own role in ‘whipping up violence’?

In his first speech about the unrest last week, Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘And let me also say to large social media companies and those who run them… Violent disorder clearly whipped up online… That is also a crime. It’s happening on your premises. And the law must be upheld everywhere.’ A few days later, his spokesman took aim at Elon Musk for tweeting ‘civil war is inevitable’ below a video of rioters aiming fireworks at police. The spokesman said there was ‘no justification’ for Musk’s comment, adding: ‘Anyone who is whipping up violence will face the full force of the law.’

So is the former director of public prosecutions asking the police to investigate the owner of Twitter? Even if Musk was guilty of ‘whipping up violence’, I know of no such criminal offence in England and Wales. Stirring up hatred against a group on the basis of their race or religion is an offence, as is inciting someone to commit a crime. But even a Crown Prosecution Service in thrall to Sir Keir would baulk at charging Musk with either of those offences. In any event, could he be prosecuted for breaking one of our laws while 5,000 miles away? Perhaps the Prime Minister was urging Ofcom to investigate Musk’s comments using its new powers under the Online Safety Act. But that, too, seems like a long shot.

The same tone was adopted by Yvette Cooper on Monday when she was interviewed on Good Morning Britain by her husband Ed Balls. (Surely that’s more deserving of an Ofcom investigation?) ‘Social media has put rocket boosters under… some of the violence that we have seen,’ she said. ‘[Social media companies] have to take much greater responsibility for what is happening on their platforms.’

For all the talk of ‘whipping up violence’, this sounds like a case of blaming the messenger in much the same way that ‘pirate radio’ was fingered for the riots in Birmingham in 2005, and BlackBerry for the unrest in 2011. The authorities have already started arresting right-wing social-media users for stirring up racial hatred, which looks like another example of ‘two-tier policing’. After all, no such arrests were made in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, even though hundreds of thousands of social-media users in the UK ‘whipped up’ violence against the police by accusing them of racism. During one demonstration, which the BBC described as ‘largely peaceful’, 27 officers were injured. Social media companies were also culpable – more so than now – because they promoted pro-BLM posts and, in some cases, included a BLM logo on their platforms. But Sir Keir didn’t demand they should feel ‘the full force of the law’. On the contrary, he took the knee.

I suppose the Prime Minister could argue he wasn’t in charge back then, but that doesn’t solve the ‘two tier’ problem, because people on the left have been guilty of disseminating ‘harmful misinformation’ in the past week and I doubt they’ll have their collars felt. Last Saturday, Nick Lowles, the chief executive of Hope Not Hate, tweeted: ‘Reports are coming in of acid being thrown out of a car window at a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough. Absolutely horrendous.’ Those reports turned out to be baseless, but it’s possible they contributed to young Asian men engaging in running battles with anti-immigrant protestors in the town the following day. Indeed, you could argue that the PM’s statement blaming ‘far-right’ outsiders for organising the unrest in Southport – and singling out their attack on a mosque – contributed to the violence by Asian counter-protestors over the following days. Is Sir Keir going to urge the police to investigate his own role in ‘whipping up violence’?

To paraphrase the US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, the best remedy for harmful speech is not enforced silence, but more and better speech. It was the absence of accurate information about the Southport attacker’s identity – due to legal restrictions – that led to the feverish speculation. More censorship would make things worse, not better.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/free-speech-stops-riots/

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August 07, 2024

Another deletion

Google have now wiped out my "Australian Politics" blog. It will however continue to be available in my backups. See:

http://jonjayray.com/ozaug24.html

And more generally via:

http://jonjayray.com/

I guess it said too much about Covid. I have asked them to reinstate it and if they do I will not again post content about Covid there



August 04, 2024

Free Speech Includes the Right to Boycott Israel

What you do with your money is your business  -- unless you use it to fund violence

Writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor affirmed an essential principle: “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” In National Rifle Association v. Vullo (2024), a New York state regulator had made extortion-like threats against banks and insurance companies to discourage them from doing business with the NRA. The court held “viewpoint discrimination is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.”

Yet laws in numerous states penalize viewpoints on another controversial issue. To do business with the state of Arkansas, you must certify that you don’t “engage in boycotts of Israel.” A federal appeals court deemed the law constitutional because it “only prohibits economic decisions,” and since those are “invisible to observers unless explained,” they not only are unprotected by the First Amendment but don’t even constitute speech. The high court declined to hear an appeal, even though it has previously said boycotts are “deeply embedded” in our political process and entail core constitutional liberties.

Can it really be constitutional for governments to penalize the silent choices people may make based on their views of the Middle East conflict? Doesn’t that amount to a thoughtcrime?

In 2017 Texas required any company contracting with the state to affirm that it “will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract.” Five plaintiffs challenged the law. One argued that the declaration was contrary to his “personal and political beliefs.” He had previously boycotted certain Israeli-made products. Could he simply decline to buy those products now? How could he prove that his future nonpurchase of Israeli products was based on pure “business purposes” and not a continued boycott? A federal district court enjoined enforcement of the law, ruling that “political boycotts are protected speech” and rest on “the highest rung” of First Amendment values.

Attempts to curtail anti-Israel boycotts aren’t new. In the 1970s, Congress sought to prevent Arab League countries from strong-arming U.S. companies into complying with their boycott of Israel. Federal regulations prohibited making agreements with league members or responding to their demands for information. Several companies sued, claiming among other things that the rule infringed on the freedom of speech. An appeals court rejected their arguments, ruling that commercial speech aimed solely at preserving Arab trade relationships didn’t warrant constitutional protection.

That narrow ruling applied to a limited circumstance, in which the federal government was asserting a foreign-policy objective. Today’s state laws serve no foreign-policy purpose and merely punish people for expressing disfavored views. “Texas stands with Israel. Period,” Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted after the Council on American-Islamic Relations announced a legal challenge to the law in 2018.

I stand with Israel too and find the views of the boycotters repugnant. But we should all fear the implications of a state using its power to penalize them. Governments are fickle, and one will sooner or later target a viewpoint, organization or country that you deem sacrosanct. Perhaps a progressive legislature will mandate that contractors boycott what it deems “apartheid” or “genocidal” countries. What then?

Americans have long engaged in boycotts, for innumerable reasons. The Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that a boycott of white merchants by blacks in Mississippi in the 1960s “clearly involved constitutionally protected activity,” including speech. More recently, consumers and investors have spoken through boycotts or divestment of companies as wide-ranging as Chick-fil-A, Target and Ben & Jerry’s/Unilever (the last in retaliation for its own anti-Israel boycott).

Under the Constitution, people are free to determine which products or stocks they buy, or don’t, without suffering viewpoint discrimination. The Supreme Court may eventually reaffirm that principle by striking down an antiboycott law. In the meantime, states should exercise restraint, even if their intentions are noble

https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-speech-includes-the-right-to-boycott-israel-b879bfb6

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1 August, 2024

NIH loses latest round of free speech lawsuit filed by animal rights activists

A U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C., today found that the U.S. National Institutes of Health violated free speech protections when it automatically hid comments on its social media pages containing keywords typically used by opponents of NIH-funded animal research.

Reversing a lower court decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that NIH was on the wrong side of the First Amendment when it used filters to hide from public view comments with keywords including “monkey,” “experiment,” and “torture” on its Facebook and Instagram pages. The agency had done so, it said, in order to enforce “off-topic” rules it has established for social media comments.

“To say that comments related to animal testing are categorically off-topic when a significant portion of NIH’s posts are about research conducted on animals defies common sense,” wrote the judges, two of whom were appointed by Democratic presidents.

The permanent policy, and the fact NIH didn’t try to manually resurrect relevant comments that were automatically hidden, “reinforces its unreasonableness,” the judges added—especially given the lack of evidence that comments protesting animal research hurt the agency’s public communication efforts. They ordered the case returned to the lower court with instructions that it rule in favor of the plaintiffs.

An NIH spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

The decision “is a major victory” for free speech, said Stephanie Krent of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs. “The court’s opinion makes clear that [government] officials can’t censor speech just because they disagree with it—and that’s true whether they delete specific comments or rely on digital tools like keyword blocking to do it for them.”

“This is a win for transparency, the public, animals, and government accountability,” said Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of the animal activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the lead plaintiff in the case. PETA and two individuals, Madeline Krasno and Ryan Hartkopf, sued NIH 3 years ago after realizing the agency was hiding their comments.

The D.C. appeals court also found that in blocking the comments, NIH likely engaged in another free speech violation, known as “viewpoint discrimination” and warned it to “tread carefully.” But the court didn’t rule on this because it had already established that the unreasonableness of the agency’s policy violated the First Amendment.

“The right to ‘praise or criticize governmental agents’ lies at the heart of the First Amendment’s protections,” the court wrote, citing earlier case law. “NIH chose to moderate its comment threads in a way that skews sharply against the appellants’ viewpoint that the agency should stop funding animal testing by filtering terms such as ‘torture’ and ‘cruel,’ not to mention terms previously included such as ‘PETA’ and ‘#stopanimaltesting.’”

(NIH voluntarily removed the last two words from its keyword list soon after the lawsuit was first filed.)

NIH has several options now. It could comply with the decision and remove the comment-hiding keywords from its content moderation settings. It could request an en banc hearing, in which all 15 members of the appeals court pass judgement on its appeal. Or it could appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-loses-latest-round-free-speech-lawsuit-filed-animal-rights-activists

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http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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