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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. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.
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31 July, 2020
Twitter Official Attempts to Explain Censorship of Trump But Not Dictators Calling for Genocide
During an Israeli Knesset hearing on anti-semitism this week, an official from Twitter was asked why President Trump's tweets are censored or given warning labels while tweets from dictators calling for genocide are allowed to stand.
"You have recently started flagging tweets from President Trump, why have you not flagged the tweets of Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei who has literally called for the genocide of the Jewish people?" human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky asked.
"Calling for genocide on Twitter is okay but commenting on certain political situations is not okay?" another woman pressed.
This was the response:
I kid you not! At Knesset hearing on Antisemitism, @Twitter rep tells me they flag @realDonaldTrump because it serves ‘public conversation’, but not Iran's @khamenei_ir call for GENOCIDE, which passes for acceptable 'commentary on political issues of the day'.
SOURCE
BBC slammed after reporter uses N-word on air
BBC journalist Fiona Lamdin has sparked intense backlash after using a racial slur during a news report about a young victim of a racially-motivated attack.
The BBC social affairs correspondent from Bristol in the UK uttered the N-word on Wednesday morning while describing a serious assault of a black National Health Service worker who was hit by a car in the city.
The attack was considered to be racially motivated as the perpetrators allegedly shouted the derogatory term to the victim.
Ms Lamdin gave viewers just a few moments notice before the word was spoken.
“Just to warn you, you’re about to hear highly offensive language,” Ms Lamdin said.
“Because as the men ran away they hurled racial abuse, calling him a ‘n*****’.”
It immediately caused an uproar, with furious viewers expressing their outrage on social media.
“Why did you feel the need to use the ‘n-word’ when talking about this incident? Not only is the use of the word appalling it also took away from the actual focus of the conversation,” one Twitter user posted.
SOURCE
30 July, 2020
Twitter's failure to pull rapper Wiley's anti-Semitic rant 'amounts to complicity', says Chief Rabbi
Twitter’s inaction over removing anti-Semitic tweets “amounts to complicity”, the Chief Rabbi has warned, as the social-network giant faces a 48-hour boycott.
On Friday night the 41-year-old rapper, Wiley, known as the “godfather of grime”, began sharing a string of “anti-Semitic” conspiracy theories and insults on his Instagram and Twitter accounts, which combined have more than 940,000 followers.
Among the tweets he shared, the rapper said: “Jewish people you make me sick …
“Don’t tell me how to speak to Jewish people either I am the reason they are rich in the UK music industry f*** them.”
In another tweet he said: "I don't care about Hitler, I care about black people", and also compared the Jewish community to the Ku Klux Klan....
SOURCE
The banned video about the coronavirus
https://banned.video/watch?id=5f1fc7a468370e02f29f34cf
and
https://www.bitchute.com/video/zr04GsUupOwk/
A group of doctors who are on the frontlines held a press conference in DC to debunk all of the lies about Covid. This video is being censored off of Youtube, FB, and Twitter.
The media are concentrating on the dubious record of the black doctor in the gathering. And there is something in that but what they are not mentioning is that the treatment she recommends -- hydroxychloroquine -- was first recommended as helpful by a prominent French doctor and was recommended by Trump himself some months ago and has now been accepted as useful by one of America's two major medical journals: JAMA. As usual, the Leftist media are ignoring good scientific evidence solely to discredit Trump.
More here and here
29 July, 2020
Peak Idiocy: Rutgers University Declares Grammar 'Racist'
The English Department at Rutgers University has declared that proper use of grammar is a hidden form of racism because it disadvantages students of “multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds.”
Grammar is rather boring, so the department is going to sex it up with all sorts of fascinating additions.
Washington Free Beacon:
The “critical grammar” approach challenges the standard academic form of the English language in favor of a more inclusive writing experience. The curriculum puts an emphasis on the variability of the English language instead of accuracy.
“This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” Walkowitz said. “Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them [with] regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”
“Variability instead of accuracy” means incorrect usage of grammatical norms. It’s nice that someone speaks a foreign language, but isn’t the whole point of teaching proper grammar teaching foreigners the proper way to speak English?
Yes, but it’s white and it’s male, and it’s gotta go.
Unfortunately, Rutgers apparently missed the mark with some activists. Aside from being incomprehensibly stupid, the change is, itself, virulently racist.
Leonydus Johnson, a speech pathologist and libertarian activist, said the school’s change makes the racist assumption that minorities cannot comprehend traditional English. Johnson called the change “insulting, patronizing, and in itself, extremely racist.”
“The idea that expecting a student to write in grammatically correct sentences is indicative of racial bias is asinine,” Johnson told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s like these people believe that being non-white is an inherent handicap or learning disability…. That’s racism. It has become very clear to me that those who claim to be ‘anti-racist’ are often the most racist people in this country.”
Grammar “greases the skids” of communication by making things easier to understand. Form and function merge seamlessly and effortlessly so that an intelligent conversation is possible.
But “critical grammar” is so counterintuitive that we’d have to think about every word we use in order to avoid “bias.” That’s the price we pay for “decolonization.”
SOURCE
San Francisco Mayor Tells Woke White Progressive to Shut Up
In an interview with Vogue, San Francisco Mayor London Breed discussed a range of issues. When asked about the current cultural moment, she said that she was overwhelmed by the response from people who are not black to the Black Lives Matter movement. However, she also expressed frustration with so-called “white allies.”
When asked if she had any critiques of the current demonstrations, she responded:
I have a real problem with the takeover of the movement by white people.
I want people to respect the opinions and feelings of Black people and allow us to decide what is in our best interest. I talk about the plan to reduce the police budget and reallocate those resources to the African American community, and a large number of non-Blacks reached out to tell me what I should do for the Black community. Then, they say what their community deserves because of their challenges as well. That really bothered me. The Black community [of San Francisco] is capable of speaking for ourselves and deciding what’s in our best interest.
Then she answered a question about whether for not she felt that the concerns of San Francisco’s black residents were being heard. Breed sharply criticized the progressive movement:
What’s happening in San Francisco now, and has for so many years, is you have a progressive movement made up of people who are mostly white and feel that they know what’s in the best interest of Black people. I’m over that.
I think it’s important that we support and respect the Black people here enough to know that we have a mind of our own. Because half the policies pushed in San Francisco are “progressive policies” that don’t work for Black people. Because, if they did, why are things far worse for Black people here? In San Francisco, a city where less than 5 to 6% of the population is African American and yet we are disproportionately overrepresented in everything that’s bad: high school dropouts, arrests, homelessness. You name it.
Thank you, Mayor Breed! Though it could be just as easily argued that progressive policies are bad for everyone. She presides over a city that had more drug addicts than high school students in January of 2019. It also spawned the Snapcrap app that tracked public defecation.
SOURCE
28 July, 2020
UK: Now it’s Islamophobic to use the word ‘jihadis’
The police are considering dropping the terms ‘Islamist terrorism’ and ‘jihadis’ when describing attacks committed by, er, Islamist terrorists or jihadists, reports The Times this morning.
Apparently, these words are problematic because they can stir up ‘Islamophobia’. The National Association of Muslim Police asked for a change in terminology because, it says, those terms currently used ‘do not help community relations and public confidence’.
Some of the alternatives suggested are nothing short of hilarious. ‘Faith-claimed terrorism’ and ‘adherents of Osama bin Laden’s ideology’ are among them. But the most amusing is probably ‘terrorists abusing religious motivations’. Catchy.
But this is deadly serious. Increasingly, we are asked to pretend that Islamist terror is not Islamist terror. In turn, any discussion about whether Islamist extremism might have something to do with the religion of Islam itself is chilled.
Despite the fact that ‘Islamist extremism’ is a term used by counter-terror experts, the National Association of Muslim Police want the police to abandon any terms ‘which have a direct link to Islam’.
But what exactly motivates these attacks if not a radical, violent, medieval form of Islam? It may not be ‘good’ Islam, and Islamist terrorists may not be ‘good’ Muslims. But they are Muslims nonetheless.
Imagine the outcry if someone argued that we should not call the Crusaders Christians. Picture the chattering-class outrage if we were to say right-wing terrorists are not actually right-wing.
We should react with consistency, then, to the absurd idea that Islamist murderers are not Islamists.
SOURCE
Fear of speech is replacing freedom of speech
For generations, Americans were raised to see robust debate as essential to democratic health. Is that still true?
"FREEDOM OF SPEECH," the famous Norman Rockwell painting that depicts a young man addressing a local gathering, was inspired by a real event. One evening in 1942, Rockwell attended the town meeting in Arlington, Vt., where he lived for many years.
On the agenda was the construction of a new school. It was a popular proposal, supported by everyone in attendance — except for one resident, who got up to express his dissenting view. He was evidently a blue-collar worker, whose battered jacket and stained fingernails set him apart from the other men in the audience, all dressed in white shirts and ties.
In Rockwell's scene, the man speaks his mind, unafraid to express a minority opinion and not intimidated by the status of those he's challenging. He has no reason not to speak plainly: His words are being attended to with respectful attention. His neighbors may disagree with him, but they're willing to hear what he has to say.
What brings Rockwell's painting to mind is a new national poll by the Cato Institute. The survey found that self-censorship has become extremely widespread in American society, with 62 percent of adults saying that, given the current political climate, they are afraid to honestly express their views.
"These fears cross partisan lines," writes Emily Ekins, Cato's director of polling. "Majorities of Democrats (52 percent), independents (59 percent), and Republicans (77 percent) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share."
The survey's 2,000 respondents sorted themselves ideologically as "very liberal," "liberal," "moderate," "conservative," or "very conservative." In every category except "very liberal," a majority of respondents feel pressured to keep their views to themselves. Roughly one-third of American adults — 32 percent — fear they could be fired or otherwise penalized at work if their political beliefs became known.
Freedom of speech has often been threatened in America, but the suppression of "wrong" opinions in the past has tended to come from the top down. It was the government that arrested editors for criticizing Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, made it a crime to burn the flag, turned the dogs on civil rights marchers, and jailed communists under the Smith Act. Today, by contrast, dissent is rarely prosecuted. Thanks to the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence, freedom of expression has never been more strongly protected — legally.
But culturally, the freedom to express unpopular views has never been more endangered.
On college campuses, in workplaces, in the media, there are ever-widening no-go zones of viewpoints and arguments that cannot be safely expressed. Voice an opinion that self-anointed social-justice warriors regard as heretical, and the consequences can be career-destroying. The dean of the nursing school at UMass-Lowell lost her job after writing in an email that "everyone's life matters." An art curator was accused of being a racist and forced to quit for saying that his museum would "continue to collect white artists." The director of communications for Boeing apologized and resigned after an employee complained that 33 years ago he was opposed to women serving in combat.
Virtually everyone would agree that some views are indisputably beyond the pale. If there are supporters of slavery or advocates of genocide who feel inhibited from sharing their beliefs, no one much cares. But the range of opinions deemed unsayable by today's progressive thought police extends well into the mainstream. And in many cases, the most enthusiastic suppressors of debate are students, journalists, artists, intellectuals — those who in former times were the greatest champions of uninhibited speech and the greatest foes of ideological conformity.
The speaker in Norman Rockwell's painting may have had something unpopular to say, but neither he nor his neighbors had any doubt that it was appropriate for him to say it. Now, such doubt is everywhere, and freedom of speech has never been more threatened.
SOURCE
27 July, 2020
Leftists have a language of their own
When you come to another country, the standard recommendation concerning language is to learn a few phrases in advance that you will definitely need. For instance, a traveler to France would need to know what Bonjour means, and a traveler to Germany would benefit from learning Guten Tag.
Without these basic language skills, they are bound to find themselves at a major disadvantage.
To the same extent, this applies to the modern language of Leftists – Newspeak.
Newspeak, widespread among American socialists (in Newspeak, they call themselves Democrats), differs from all other languages ??in that it has a strikingly high percentage of words borrowed from classical English. Although, these words have a completely different meaning for the Newspeakers.
For example, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in Newspeak has nothing to do with black lives. Moreover, in Newspeak, this phrase has no racial connotation at all.
The correct translation of “Black Lives Matter” into plain English is “Marxists Lives Matter.”
Only by knowing the correct translation can one avoid violence when speaking to “peaceful” rioters, “peaceful” vandals, and “peaceful” rapists. Only by understanding the correct interpretation can one begin to comprehend why the phrases “White Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter” cause such a sharp, violent reaction from the Leftist ersatz-revolutionaries. Indeed, in the language of the revolutionaries, “All Lives Matter” means “Anti-Communist Lives Matter” -- which is very offensive and defiant for all Leftists.
“White,” in Newspeak, simply means an anti-Marxist (sometimes an anti-communist) and has nothing to do with the amount of melanin pigment in the skin. This is why the word “Black” in Newspeak should be capitalized – just like in English, it is customary to capitalize the word “Marxist.” According to Newspeak, the black man is a man of the black race, and the Black man with a capital B is a soldier of the revolution, a Marxist with a capital M.
Capital-B-Black is a black camouflage for Marxism-Leninism.
In fact, the author of the concept of “white privilege,” former Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev, proposed another well-known construct of Newspeak. (Professor Ignatiev was either white or Capital-B-Black, depending on what language is being spoken.) In his school of thought, “racism is a form of anti-communism.” Therefore, all whites, according to the rioters, are, by definition, anti-communists – but only until they kneel before the Capital-B-Blacks.
Besides, Newspeak eviscerated the entire racist component from the word “racism” and endowed this word with Left-wing political attributes only.
Newspeak is continually evolving. Recently, an attempt has even been made to redefine conservatism as a form of racism. While traditional Marxism used the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!”, modern Marxists in America had to abandon this slogan. By definition, the workers are those who work. However, at the center of the ersatz-revolution of 2020 are those who do not work. American neo-Marxists deserted this unproductive, as it seems to them, idea. They’ve chosen bandits, looters, vandals, lumpens, and nincompoops blinded by leftist ideals as the cannon fodder for the revolution.
Prominent American philosophers-pillagers of our time use the more appropriate slogan “Ignoramuses of the world, unite!”
The phrase “Black Lives Matter,” drawn in large yellow letters over the roadway in front of Trump Tower in New York City, has nothing to do with the “racial confrontation between blacks and whites.” This phrase, ordered by the Mayor of New York (stubborn communist Bill de Blasio), is meant to communicate the supremacy of Marxism in front of an embodiment of capitalism (Donald Trump). Like “African-Americans,” “Bill de Blasio” itself is also Newspeak: the real name of the Mayor of New York is Warren Wilhelm Jr.
Does Donald Trump understand all the shades and nuances of modern Newspeak? Of course.
President Trump is aware that America has caught a political infection, and Newspeak is just its outward symptom.
Trump, in classical English terms, defined the source of the riots in America. The perpetrators are not Russian hackers, Arab terrorists, or some abstract “racists” and “fascists,” but home-grown, radical Left-wing bastards. Trump’s message for American citizens is that the political confrontation today is a confrontation between those who believe that America’s history should be defended and those who would attempt to destroy it.
In the 2020 election cycle, Democrats with unheard-of perseverance tried to make everyone finally understand that they are an anti-American party. Well, they succeeded. Ask any American about who is robbing, killing, and pillaging – and not a single person in his or her right mind will say that this is the work of the Republicans.
As a result, neo-Marxists from the Democrat Party brought Donald Trump a political gift on a silver platter. They brought it by themselves – Trump did not ask for it and did not expect it.
The task of the Leftist forces in the summer of 2020 was to normalize the pogroms. In fairness, it should be noted that the Left has enough experience in various “normalizations.” For example, the normalization of the Jewish pogroms. The normalization of relations with the Communists of Cuba and China. The normalization of the forced assignment of the color red (a historically “evil” color) to the conservatives, and blue for themselves (traditionally, “the good guys” color). They also succeeded in the normalization of the insolent usurpation of the title “liberals,” which historically belonged to the conservative Founding Fathers of the United States since the 18th century. Instead, they ensured that the policies of the Democrats in the minds of American citizens were firmly placed in the column “Anti-Americanism.”
In addition, the process of Balkanization is rapidly growing inside the mob-inducing Democrat Party – individual factions are already starting to quarrel with each other openly. On the left flank of the political spectrum, as always, there are no changes – it is very crowded over there, as usual. The DNC is finding it increasingly difficult to keep the white militants of Antifa, and the black militants of the Black Lives Matter from shootings, although both of them are capital-B-Blacks in Newspeak – that is, the Marxists.
Thanks to Newspeak, the word “fascism” has long lost its original meaning. This worn-out epithet was used by Newspeakers so often that, in full accordance with the Goodwin Law, it ceased to carry any purpose. However, in a recent Mt. Rushmore speech, President Trump breathed life into this killed-by-Newspeak term, clearly defining it as “left fascism.” World history, by the way, never experienced “right fascism,” even if the Newspeakers from the Frankfurt School of Socialism have been desperately trying to prove the opposite.
If the Leftists’ verbal juggling is comprehensible by President Trump, then there are certain doubts that the average American voter is at the same level of intellectual sophistication. The likelihood that American citizens, for the most part, will refuse to delve into the nuances of who blacks are and how they differ from the capital-B-Blacks is very high.
The consequences for American citizens who just happen to be black are not immediately apparent. However, with a certain degree of confidence, one can make a forecast for the political fate of Leftists after the 2020 elections. To do this, one simply needs to look into the Newspeak dictionary more often to not make a fool of oneself.
SOURCE
British military hero faces the sack as Chief Cadet of the Royal Navy after he called Black Lives Matter protesters 'absolute scum'
He speaks for a lot of people
Channel 4 star Ant Middleton, the former Special Forces trooper, is facing the sack as Chief Cadet of the Royal Navy – but top brass have yet to pluck up the courage to tell him.
Navy chiefs have hatched a plot to remove the SAS: Who Dares Wins frontman after he called Black Lives Matter campaigners ‘absolute scum’ and urged the public to ignore official advice over coronavirus.
Admiralty bosses hope to persuade Mr Middleton – who has apologised for his remarks – to resign from the honorary position to avoid a public row. But if he refuses to step down, he will be formally dismissed.
And perhaps with their personal safety in mind, the defence chiefs intend to telephone Mr Middleton rather than speak face to face with the 39-year-old TV hardman.
SOURCE
26 July, 2020
Linguistic Humbug
The culture war — and its current battlefront ‘cancel culture’ — is exacerbated because the opposing sides are not speaking the same language .
Depending on your beliefs, cancel culture is either “[a] ‘woke movement’ [akin] to those of Chairman Mao’s Red Guards” or a myth spread by the privileged “in their war against accountability” — accountability’ being an equally malleable term.
As Simon Heffer has written, in a free society, the “normal accountability that has always gone with freedom of speech…is an accountability to the rest of society.” But ‘accountability’ today can mean firing and publicly shaming people for what they say, which is more akin to retribution.
Refusing to put limits on ‘accountability’ suits the cancellers because they can justify all action by simply saying the cancelled were “just being held accountable.”
The debate arena is filled with similar polarised interpretations.
Apparently there are no rioters or looters; only ‘peaceful protestors’ and — as the ubiquitous placard reads — the real violence is silence. ‘All lives matter’ is no longer a universal truism, but seen as ‘a racist dog-whistle.’
These diametrically opposed definitions serve a nefarious purpose.
As Orwell wrote in Politics and Language words such as “democracy” and “freedom” have several irreconcilable meanings, but this suits many because “words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.”
But consciously using language to deceive creates confusion and division. Ending racism no longer means judging a person’s character but involves tearing down the system. That’s why you can see a white women yelling at black cops that they are “part of the problem.”
As academics and prominent hoaxers Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay argue in their critique on Critical Social Justice, the movement “relies on a specific conception of the world: it does not understand or interpret reality in the same way as the rest of us…”
Endlessly reinventing, and inverting language allows a dishonest speaker to confuse and manipulate the hearer — ensuring “lies sound truthful.”
SOURCE
Google's Dry Run
Did Tuesday's "blip" reveal a list of conservative sites blacklisted for suppression?
As Tristan Justice at The Federalist reports, “Google appeared to test its ability to blacklist conservative media Tuesday from its monopolized search engine which garners at least 3.5 billion online searches everyday making up 94 percent of the internet’s search share. Websites targeted, according to NewsBusters which itself was temporarily de-platformed, included the Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze, Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent, Breitbart, the Media Research Center, and CNSNews among others.”
Google, of course, isn’t a terrorist organization, but the tech giant is evil. It does have a robber-baronesque stranglehold on online search, and it does desperately want President Donald Trump to lose his bid for a second term on November 3.
Remember the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth we saw in that leaked video of the Google all-hands meeting in the wake of Trump’s shocking victory? The one in which Google cofounder Sergey Brin says he’s “deeply offended” by Trump’s election, which “conflicts with many of [Google’s] values”? The one in which Google CFO Ruth Porat appears to break down in tears before promising that Google will “use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values”? Yeah, that one.
“The latest bout of censorship,” Justice continues, “comes just weeks after the California tech giant threatened to demonetize The Federalist following NBC’s collusion with a foreign left-wing think tank. … While NBC News first celebrated Google’s decision to de-platform a competitor, the search company clarified that the website had not been banned and instead it merely threatened to demonetize The Federalist for content in the comments sections. YouTube, meanwhile, which is owned by Google, remains notorious for hosting the most nefarious comments sections on the entire Internet.”
Thus caught with its dirty left hand in the censorship cookie jar, Google claimed it had made “a simple technical error” rather than a full-throated and deliberate attempt to silence political speech with which it didn’t agree. Uh-huh.
SOURCE
24 July, 2020
Twitter Blacklists 7,000 ‘QAnon’ Accounts, Limits 150,000 Others
In a sweeping move across the platform, Twitter has banned 7,000 accounts related to the “QAnon” movement and limited another 150,000.
NBC News reports that Twitter announced this week that it had taken action across its platform to limit the reach of the QAnon movement, banning 7,000 QAnon-related accounts and limiting a further 150,000. Twitter alleged that this was due to ongoing problems with harassment and the spread of misinformation on the platform.
The spokesperson requested to remain anonymous due to fears of targeted harassment. The spokesperson added that 7,000 QAnon accounts had been removed for breaking the site’s rules on targeted harassment as part of its new policy.
Twitter claims that while the targeted enforcement against QAnon fell under Twitter’s existing platform manipulation rules, its classification of QAnon conspiracy followers as coordinated harmful activity was a new designation for the theorists.
The QAnon theory centers around the belief that an anonymous tipster within the Trump administration is revealing how President Donald Trump is leading a war against the Deep State which is comprised of politicians, business executives, and Hollywood elites who abuse children and practice Satan worship.
The FBI designated QAnon a potential domestic terror threat last year. The FBI’s report that detailed QAnon’s ties to dangerous real-world activities reportedly influence Twitter’s decision to crack down on the theory on its platform.
SOURCE
Google hides conservative & alt-media websites from search results for hours
Google excluded major conservative and alt-media outlets from its search results for hours, hiding hits for sites like Breitbart and RedState even in searches for the outlets' names - only to mysteriously revert to normal later.
Conservative sites were in a panic Tuesday morning, reporting they seemed to have been blacklisted from Google. Articles and pages published by PJ Media, Daily Caller, The Blaze, and many other sites were absent even from searches for the publication name, replaced by links to Wikipedia and other sites talking about the outlet in question - usually negatively.
While most of the affected sites hailed from the right side of the political spectrum, leftist sites whose views don’t conform to prevailing orthodoxy also appeared to fall victim to the purge. Mediaite’s Charlie Nash posted a screenshot of a Google search for “MintPress News” that included no hits from the left-leaning antiwar outlet, while another commenter noted Occupy Democrats was MIA.
Google was quick with the damage control, announcing it was “investigating this and any potentially related issues.” The search giant described the problem as if it was merely an issue with one specific search command rather than a politically-specific problem that somehow left establishment-friendly media alone.
SOURCE
23 July, 2020
UK: University lecturer, 73, is sacked after telling colleague that 'Jewish people are the cleverest in the world', 'Germans are good at engineering' and young black men 'need all the help they can get'
When opinions are "gross misconduct" and need to be punished
A university lecturer was sacked after claiming 'Jewish people are the cleverest in the world' and 'Germans are good engineers'.
Stephen Lamonby claimed his comments were not racist or offensive because he was using 'positive stereotypes'.
The 73-year-old also said he 'had a soft spot' for young black men because they are underprivileged as 'many are without fathers' and so 'need all the help they can get'.
He made similar comments about people from Eastern Europe, specifically citing Lithuanians.
An employment tribunal heard the controversial remarks were made during a meeting with Dr Janet Bonar, his course leader at Solent University in Southampton, Hants.
The pair were talking in the the university canteen in March 2019, when Mr Lamonby, an engineer, told her that in his experience people from different countries had become good at certain things due to 'high exposure'.
Following the ruling, Mr Lamonby said he would be appealing, claiming he was a victim of a 'woke' culture and that universities are 'totally obsessed with racism'.
He added: 'It was one of those off the cuff remarks and I know these days people are worried about Muslim terrorists so perhaps I should not have said it.'
During cross-examination, he was asked whether black people might find it offensive that they might need extra help and he said 'no, not just black people, also Lithuanians'.
He claimed he was 'shocked' by Dr Bonar's reaction and said: 'My comments were simply stating that, arising from my lifetime of experience, I have come to believe that certain nationalities have developed a higher level of skill in some areas.
During a final disciplinary hearing he eventually admitted he had 'been clumsy' in his language and 'apologised profoundly' saying he had no intention of being racist.
Despite this, he continued to make 'inappropriate' comments during the hearing, referring to ethnic groups as 'they' and to Jews having 'neurological differences'
Vice Chancellor Julie Hall, who chaired the hearing, said Mr Lamonby did not understand that what he had said was offensive.
He was dismissed for gross misconduct.
SOURCE
How ‘Self-Censorship’ Hurts Free Speech
Why George Orwell's warning against being silenced is more relevant than ever
Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.
The above is a quotation from George Orwell’s preface to Animal Farm, titled “The Freedom of the Press,” where he discussed the chilling effect the Soviet Union’s influence had on global publishing and debate far beyond the reach of its official censorship laws.
Wait, no it isn’t. The quote is actually an excerpt from the resignation letter of New York Times opinion editor and writer Bari Weiss, penned this week, where she blows the whistle on the hostility toward intellectual diversity that now reigns supreme at the country’s most prominent newspaper.
A contrarian moderate but hardly right-wing in her politics, the journalist describes the outright harassment and cruelty she faced at the hands of her colleagues, to the point where she could no longer continue her work:
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’ Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.
Weiss’s letter reminds us of the crucial warning Orwell made in his time: To preserve a free and open society, legal protections from government censorship, while crucial, are not nearly enough.
To see why, simply consider the fate that has met Weiss and so many others in recent memory who dared cross the modern thought police. Here are just a few of the countless examples of “cancel culture” in action:
A museum curator in San Francisco resigned after facing a mob and petition for his removal simply because he stated that his museum would still collect art from white men.
A Palestinian immigrant and business owner had his lease canceled and restaurant boycotted after activists dug up his daughter’s old offensive social media posts from when she was a teenager.
A Hispanic construction worker was fired for making a supposedly “white supremacist” hand signal that for most people has always just meant “okay.”
A soccer player was pushed off the Los Angeles Galaxy roster because his wife posted something racist on Instagram.
The head opinion editor of the New York Times was fired and his colleague was demoted after they published an op-ed by a US senator arguing a widely held position and liberal colleagues claimed the words “put black lives in danger.’
A random Boeing executive was recently mobbed and fired because he wrote an article 30 years ago arguing against having women serve in combat roles in the military.
A data analyst tweeted out the findings of a research paper (by a black scholar) about the ineffectiveness of protests and was fired after colleagues claimed their safety was threatened.
Led by progressives as prominent as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a woke mob tried to get a Chicago economist fired from his editorship of an economics journal for tweeting that embracing “Defund the Police” undercuts the Black Lives Matter movement’s chances of achieving real reform.
These are just a few examples of many. One important commonality to note is that none of these examples involve actual government censorship. Yet they still represent chilling crackdowns on free speech. As David French put it writing for The Dispatch, “Cruelty bullies employers into firing employees. Cruelty bullies employees into leaving even when they’re not fired. Cruelty raises the cost of speaking the truth as best you see it—until you find yourself choosing silence, mainly as a pain-avoidance mechanism.”
These recent observations echo what Orwell warned of decades ago:
Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship… but the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the [government] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.
Similarly, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell noted in a 1922 speech “It is clear that thought is not free if the professional of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.”
Some might wonder why it’s really so important to protect speech and thought beyond the law. After all, if no one’s going to jail over it, how serious can the consequences really be?
While understandable as an impulse, this logic misses the point. Free and open speech is the only way a society can, through trial and error, get closer to the truth over time. It was abolitionist Frederick Douglas who described free speech as “the great moral renovator of society and government.” What he meant was that only the free flow of open speech can challenge existing orthodoxies and evolve society. From women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement, we never would have made so much progress on sexism and racism without the right to speak freely.
Silence enshrines the status quo. As John Stuart Mill put it:
If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
This great discovery process through free-flowing speech first and foremost requires a hands-off approach from the government, but it still cannot occur in a culture hostile to dissenting opinion and debate. When airing a differing view can get you mobbed or put your job in jeopardy, only society’s most powerful or those whose views align with the current orthodoxy will be able to speak openly without fear.
Orwell and Russell were right then, even if we’re only fully realizing it now. Self-censorship driven by culture, not government, erodes our collective discovery of truth all the same.
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22 July, 2020
The University of York apologises for saying 'negro' in lecture on civil rights hero's book
Lecturers were forced to apologise after students attending a class on race complained about quotations from renowned black writers which included the word ‘negro’.
Undergraduates at the University of York said they had been left ‘distressed’ after an academic read out passages which included the word from works by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American sociologist and civil rights activist, and Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist and anti-colonialist – both black academics.
‘Negro’ was the official and accepted term of self-identification for African-Americans in the early 20th Century, and Du Bois’s seminal study is called The Philadelphia Negro. The first chapter in Black Skin, White Masks, one of Fanon’s most important works, is entitled The Negro And Language.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an African-American sociologist and civil rights activist +4
Du Bois’s seminal study is called The Philadelphia Negro +4
Lecturers were forced to apologise after students attending a class on race complained about quotations from renowned black writers which included the word ‘negro’. An academic read out passages from works including one by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American sociologist and civil rights activist
Despite the clear academic context in which the word was used, the students complained to Helen Smith, head of the English department.
...and comes up with this bizarre trigger warning for the future
'I am going to be using quotations which feature racial slurs, in an attempt to fully explore the topic, and in no way to condone the use of such words in other contexts by those who are not members of the specific racial groups who have chosen to reclaim these terms'
In response, Ms Smith wrote a letter of apology saying that while the term was part of a quotation and was not used ‘offensively’, she recognised that reading it out had caused ‘considerable distress’.
SOURCE
Sexist trains
A job advertisement, promoted by Sydney Trains via Seek, has triggered confusion after the listing detailed “recruitment is open to women only”.
The organisation has since responded by saying it will change how the advert is worded to better reflect its plan to promote diversity and gender inclusion in the workplace.
The ad, which has since been removed, was for a trainee train driver and specifies the role is only for women.
Speaking to 2GB, Sydney Trains acting chief executive Suzanna Holden told the station gender inequality was rife in the industry, and the job ad was the first in a series of diverse roles that would be advertised in the coming weeks. “We are recruiting wide and broad at the moment,” she said.
“The wording is a little unfortunate, and we are making some changes to the wording.”
Trains have been running in Sydney for more than 100 years, and Ms Holden said that was largely why it had remained a male-dominated industry. Only 18 per cent of drivers are female.
“We (women) are significantly under-represented,” she said. “It’s (the advert) more around getting gender equality. It’s not specifically to focus on female-only recruitment; that’s certainly not the case.
“This is targeted deliberately at women. But in the next couple of weeks we’re going out with a more broader campaign.”
The idea was to encourage women to apply for jobs they traditionally believed were only for men, she explained.
SOURCE
21 July, 2020
Trump defends the Confederate flag as a proud symbol of U.S. South, jokes that he's going to rename Fort Bragg after Al Sharpton
President Donald Trump refused to say the Confederate flag is an offensive symbol during an interview on Sunday, where he touted the controversial banner as a sign of pride for the South.
The Republican president was asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if the flag, considered a symbol of slavery and oppression by most Americans, was offensive.
'It depends on who you're talking about, when you're talking about,' Trump responded.
'When people proudly had their Confederate flags, they're not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South. They like the South ... I say it's freedom of many things, but it's freedom of speech,' he added.
Trump has been an audible opponent of banning the Confederate flag, slamming it as an infringement of freedom of speech. He's even threatened to veto a military bill if it allows for the renaming of forts christened after Confederate generals.
Trump voiced his disapproval of cancel culture, reasoning that the Confederacy had a role in American history.
'I'm not offended either by Black Lives Matter, that's freedom of speech. You know the whole thing with cancel culture — we can't cancel our whole history. We can't forget that the North and the South fought,' he added.
'Because I think that Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, all these forts that have been named that way for a very long time. Fort Bragg is a big deal, we won two world wars. Go to that community where Fort Bragg is … say how do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg? And then what are we going to name it? Are we going to name it after the Revered Al Sharpton?' Trump said.
SOURCE
Calling a dog by the N-word is REALLY bad
A Dambusters hero's relative has been branded a racist after her petition to restore the name of RAF legend Guy Gibson's dog to its gravestone amassed almost 20,000 signatures.
Sarah Hobday, 41, launched a campaign to return black Labrador N****r's name to the headstone at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire amid fury over its removal on Thursday.
Ms Hobday, whose great uncle Sydney Hobday was part of the crew who breached the Eder dam in May 1943, initially set a goal of 15,000 signatures which was eclipsed by Saturday. She has since gathered 19,574 supporters.
The campaigner wants the stone tablet 'back where it belongs' after RAF top brass paid for a new memorial, replacing where the dog's name was with an outline of the canine and the words 'The Dog.'
Ms Hobday, who called the act an 'eradication of history,' has now been 'reported for being a racist' amid the petition.
David Green, who grew up at RAF Scampton in the 1980s and regularly visited the dog's grave, said: 'I hope people do support Sarah Hobday with this petition. 'It means a lot to her as a member of Dambusters, Sydney Hobday, was a family member.
'Sadly, due to her putting a lot of effort into this, some silly minded people have reported her for being a racist.
'I know her personally and she is not racist at all but so passionate about this cause. She isn't in the best of health and this is only adding extra health issues on her.
The stone tablet honours Gibson's black Labrador N****r, who was run over by a car and killed just hours before his Wing Commander owner led the famous World War Two raid.
But the RAF carried out a 'review of its historical assets' and decided the term – which is an offensive slur against people of colour – had to go.
The airfield said it 'did not want to give prominence to an offensive term'.
SOURCE
20 July, 2020
Even hateful, hurtful and harmful speech is protected speech
It was not until 1969, in a case called Brandenburg v. Ohio, that the Supreme Court gave us a modern definition of the freedom of speech.
Brandenburg harangued a crowd in Hamilton County, Ohio and urged them to march to Washington and take back the federal government from Blacks and Jews, whom he argued were in control. He was convicted in an Ohio state court of criminal syndicalism — basically, the use of speech to arouse others to violence.
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed his conviction and held that all innocuous speech is absolutely protected, and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to rebut it. The same Supreme Court had just ruled in Times v. Sullivan that the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to encourage and protect open, wide, robust, even caustic and unbridled speech.
The speech we love needs no protection. The speech we hate does. The government has no authority to evaluate speech. As the framers understood, all persons have a natural right to think as we wish and to say and publish whatever we think. Even hateful, hurtful and harmful speech is protected speech.
Yet in perilous times like the present, we have seen efforts to use the courts to block the publication of unflattering books. We have seen state governors use the police to protect gatherings of protesters with whose message they agreed and to disburse critical protesters. We have seen mobs silence speakers while the police did nothing.
Punishing speech is the most dangerous business because there will be no end to it. The remedy for hateful or threatening speech is not silence or punishments; it is more speech — speech that challenges the speaker.
SOURCE
UK: Exam board apologises and withdraws GCSE psychology textbook featuring cartoon of black tribe cooking a white missionary in a pot
What was once an amusing image is no longer
An exam board that approved a textbook that included a cartoon of black people cooking a white missionary in a pot above a question about cannibals has apologised.
AQA - one of the UK's three main examination bodies - said that the GCSE psychology textbook should never have been approved.
The section in the book - published by Illuminate Publishing in 2017 - was first highlighted by Lizzie Jordan, founder of Think2Speak, an organisation that mentors young people.
'The five authors, the proofreader, the editor, the publisher, the printer, the educator — the myriad of hands this will have gone through before being a resource in a child's hands,' Jordan said to The Times. 'I can't understand how stuff like that gets printed.'
The picture in the book was a cartoon of two white missionaries, captured by a group of black men said to be cannibals.
The question accompanying the image reads: 'Three missionaries and three cannibals are trying to cross a river, however at no time can there be more cannibals than missionaries on either bank or in the boat. How can they do this?'
The wider context around the image and question was a discussion about how a group working together could generate more ideas than individuals working along.
Illuminate Publishing said in a statement: 'We apologise unreservedly and have withdrawn the book from sale. We are replacing the image and example and are disposing of existing stock. We are deeply sorry for any offence caused.'
An AQA representative added: 'We have zero tolerance of racism. There are no excuses and we're sorry.'
SOURCE
19 July, 2020
British Fire service bans Black Country flag due to 'potential link to slavery'
Chains can be a sign of unity. See the Eton boating song
The black country was central to the industrial revolution and at that time pollution filled the sky and the region was described as 'Black by Day' and 'Red by Night' by Elihu Burritt. Hence the colours in the flag
Their foundries also forged the anchors and chains for great ships like the Titanic, hence the chains on the flag
.
A fire service has been criticised for banning a Black Country flag designed by 12-year-old schoolgirl because it features a chain with a "potential link to slavery".
The red, black and white emblem was designed by Gracie Sheppard in 2013 to commemorate the industrial heritage of the West Midlands area.
Selected by public vote, it is proudly displayed on homes and buildings across the region on July 14, known as Black Country Day.
However, West Midlands Fire Service has now refused to display the flag at its stations, claiming the chains pictured on it may have historically been associated with the slave trade.
The service pledged its support to the Black Lives Matter movement and said it wants its staff to instead celebrate Black Country Day "in alternative ways" until they have established what the chains represent....
SOURCE
Must not support the police
'I thought it looked cool!' Houston Rockets star James Harden said he didn't intend to make a political statement after he sparked outrage by wearing a 'pro-police flag mask' in photos released by the NBA
Both the Houston Rockets and the NBA Twitter accounts shared official photos of Harden in a blue and black mask which featured a skull graphic. Many speculated that the garment was a 'blue patriot mask', which has connotations with white supremacist and far-right movements
Harden addressed the outrage Friday saying he did not intend to make a political statement, and only wore the mask because he thought it 'looked cool'
SOURCE
17 July, 2020
Free speech continues to fall out of favor with big American corporations
If you want to look skinny, surround yourself with fat people. Likewise, if you want to look like you’re a fan of the First Amendment, surround yourself with social media CEOs.
So it is with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is anything but a free-speech absolutist but who has nonetheless been taking fire from the woke Left and a host of craven corporate virtue signalers for a few weeks now. His crime? Refusing to join Twitter and the other major social media platforms in censoring political speech.
“Now,” as NPR reports, “more than 400 companies, from Coca-Cola and Adidas to Ford and Lego, have vowed to halt advertising on the social network, in a growing protest over how it handles hate speech and other harmful content.”
The boycott is called “Stop Hate for Profit,” and the list of herd-following corporate censors is now nearing 1,000. As NPR continues, “The campaign takes aim at Facebook’s advertising juggernaut, which accounted for more than 98% of the company’s nearly $70 billion in revenue last year. The stated goal: ‘to force [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg to address the effect that Facebook has had on our society.’”
Somewhere in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping is smiling broadly. After all, he didn’t have to lift a finger to convince corporate America to throw in with the speech-censoring Left. The Communist Chinese must thus feel mighty emboldened about their crackdown on pro-democracy Hong Kongers and thoroughly vindicated for their strong-arm treatment of the NBA a few months ago, when they forced the league to denounce one of its own for having had the temerity to tweet, “Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”
Free speech no longer seems quite so free, does it?
Despite having lost more than $7 billion of personal wealth in a single day, Zuckerberg has so far held firm, much to the chagrin of boycott organizers such as the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP, and even more to the chagrin of someone named Rashad Robinson, who runs Color of Change, an organization that, according to its Twitter account, designs “campaigns powerful enough to end practices that unfairly hold Black people back, & champion[s] solutions that move us all forward.”
It’s remarkable that a relative runt like Robinson can hold a mega-billion-dollar tech giant like Facebook hostage, but these are woke times in which we live. “They have had our demands for years and yet it is abundantly clear that they are not yet ready to address the vitriolic hate on their platform,” Robinson tweeted last week.
As National Review’s Rich Lowry put it, “Internet companies are always going to be engaged in the fraught business of drawing the line between what’s permissible or not, but the current Facebook controversy is more consequential than that. The company is the target of left-wing activists who, with the ready assent of corporate America, have been able to force a wave of cancellations around the culture and now seek to bend a social media behemoth to their will.”
Years ago, it would’ve been unthinkable to imagine the American Left and corporate America finding common cause with the Communist Chinese in opposition to something so fundamentally American. But there they are, and the stakes are high. As Lowry points out, “If Zuckerberg can nonetheless be browbeaten out of his well-considered support for a free-speech-centric approach to his platform, it will be a particularly portentous omen in a period of our national life full of them.”
SOURCE
Ricky Gervais brands 'cancel culture' a 'weird sort of fascism' as he defends free speech
Ricky Gervais has continued to slam 'cancel culture' as he defended the use of free speech in a new interview.
The comedian, 59, who delivered a series of controversial gags at the 77th Golden Globes awards ceremony back in January, described 'wokeness' as 'a weird sort of fascism' amid calls for 'the free exchange of information and ideas.'
He said: 'There's this new weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and what you can't and it's a really weird thing. Just because you're offended it doesn't mean you're right.'
The After Life creator shared his thoughts on online shaming after 150 celebrated authors, academics and journalists including Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and Noam Chomsky signed a letter criticising 'cancel culture'.
The media personality said on talkRadio earlier this month: 'There's this new trendy myth that people who want free speech want to say awful things all the time.
'It's just isn't true, it protects everyone. If you're mildly left-wing on Twitter, you're suddenly Trotsky, right?
'If you're mildly conservative, you're Hitler and if you're centrist and you look at both arguments, you're a coward. Just because you're offended it doesn't mean you're right.'
A few days earlier, the actor said his hit TV show The Office would struggle to air today due to online 'outrage mobs'.
SOURCE
16 July, 2020
Here Come the Speech Police
Recently, I ran across a piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer that lays out four racist words and phrases that should be banished from the English language. It begins like this:
“Editor’s note: Please be aware offensive terms are repeated here solely for the purpose of identifying and analyzing them honestly. These terms may upset some readers.”
Steel yourself, brave reader, here they are:
Peanut gallery.
Eenie meenie miney moe.
Gyp.
No can do.
The same grammarian who authored the piece had previously confronted the “deeply racist connotation” of the word “thug,” noting that President Donald Trump “wasn’t the least bit bashful” when calling Minneapolis rioters “thugs” in a tweet, despite the word’s obvious bigoted history.
In 2015, President Barack Obama referred to Baltimore rioters as “thugs” as well. He likely did so because “thug”—defined as a “violent person, especially a criminal”—is a good way to describe rioters.
It’s true that not everyone in a riot engages in wanton violent criminality. Some participants are merely “looters”—defined as “people who steal goods during a riot.” That word is also allegedly imbued with racist conations, according to the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times and others.
Attempting to dictate what words we use is another way to exert power over how we think.
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Police Under Investigation for Traffic Safety Message That Offended Black Lives Matter Protesters
Last week, Paul Brodeur, mayor of Melrose, Mass., apologized for a supposedly offensive traffic safety message and launched an investigation into it. He made a federal case about a police billboard reading “THE SAFETY OF ALL LIVES MATTER.” This simple statement expressing the importance of safety for everyone is purportedly offensive or racist or something because many respond to the “Black Lives Matter” movement with signs reading “All Lives Matter.”
“I have just been made aware that the following traffic sign is being displayed on Main Street,” Brodeur tweeted with a picture of the sign. “I have ordered that it be taken down immediately and am taking steps to find out how this happened. I apologize to the residents of Melrose.”
SOURCE
15 July, 2020
Ho hum Another "racist" hoax
In July, Aggie quarterback Kellen Mond led protests at the statue of the school’s former president, Lawrence Sullivan “Sully” Ross, demanding that the statue be removed because Ross, who was also a Texas governor and founder of historically black Prairie View A&M University, fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. The statue was repeatedly vandalized with tags including “BLM” and “ACAB,” the latter meaning “all cops are bastards.”
While those protests were at their height and media glare focused on the university, a 21-year-old A&M senior reported to campus police that someone had placed racist notes on the windshield of his car.
The university was quick to respond with an investigation and a promise to identify the culprit.
Investigators say they have found the perp and ripped off the mask.
In a report released to KBTX on Thursday, police at Texas A&M University said a student who reported finding racist notes on his car’s windshield last month may have placed the papers there himself. However, the 21-year-old at the center of the case strongly denies those claims.
They got him via video from a security camera at a swimming pool in the area.
Police say the notes did not rise to the level of a “hate crime” since they included no threats, Martin himself is the most likely person to have placed them there, and have closed the case.
SOURCE
George Floyd kills the Redskins
The huge violence that has greeted the untimely death of George Floyd has made a lot of company bosses afraid for themselves and their company's assets. So they have gone into protective mode: Anything to ensure that the rage passes them by. I can't blame them
The Washington NFL franchise announced Monday that it will drop the 'Redskins' name and logo immediately, bowing to decades of criticism that they are offensive to Native Americans.
A new name must still be selected for one of the oldest and most storied teams in the National Football League, and it remains unclear how soon that will happen. But for now, arguably the most polarizing name in North American professional sports is gone at a time of reckoning over racial injustice, iconography and racism in the US.
The move came less than two weeks after owner Dan Snyder, a boyhood fan of the team who once declared he would never get rid of the name, launched a 'thorough review' amid pressure from sponsors. FedEx, Nike, Pepsi and Bank of America all lined up against the name, which was given to the franchise in 1933 when the team was still based in Boston.
FedEx earlier this month became the first sponsor to announce it had asked the organization to change the name, particularly important because CEO Frederick Smith owns part of the team.
FedEx also paid $205 million for the long-term naming rights to the team's stadium in Landover, Maryland.
SOURCE
14 July, 2020
Fiddling around with linguistics does nothing to eradicate racism
Up front, let’s concede that this column’s peg is of nominal importance. Yet last week’s announcement that The New York Times will hereafter capitalise “black” when “describing people and cultures of African origin” is nevertheless a window on the genuflections of the moment.
[I wonder if this will apply to reports of black crime -- JR]
In a statement explaining the policy change, the editorial decision is portrayed as a direct result of the George Floyd protests last month. The typographical tweak is an inexpensive – one is tempted to say cheap – gesture, if only to soothe the products of university identity politics who’ve all but taken over America’s purported “paper of record”. The upper-casing of “black” is an act of relatively effortless pandering, both to young, woke staff, and to the larger Black Lives Matter movement. What the change does not do, of course, is remotely improve the lot of black people in real terms or diminish prejudice
SOURCE
The cost of Free speech in Australia
Bureaucratic harassment of Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant particularly troublesome
Des Houghton
The right to free speech is in danger of being, trampled as unelected, overzealous bureaucrats aim to silence dissenting voices and opinions
PAULINE Hanson, Germaine Greer, a spy known only as K and distinguished Brisbane doctor Donald Grant today find themselves to be strange bedfellows. All have incurred the wrath of unelected, overzealous bureaucrats who don't want you to hear what they have to say.
To my mind their right to free speech was trampled. If we had a bigger bed we could invite Drew Pavlou and Peter Ridd to join the Order of Strange Bedfellows. Pavlou, a philosophy student, was disciplined by the University of Queensland for supporting Hong Kong activists against friends of the Chinese Communist Party in campus demos. It's been a public relations disaster for UQ with accusations it has grovelled to Beijing for commercial gain.
Professor Ridd is fighting an ongoing legal battle with James Cook University after calling out what he said was bad science surrounding climate change and the Great Barrier Reef. The university went to extraordinary lengths to silence and punish him.
Boffins at several universities in the UK have gone so far as to ban Germaine Greer because they don't happen to like her views on transgender politics. Whether or not we agree with Greer, Ridd or Pavlou is largely irrelevant to the fundamental right of free speech. A free society tolerates dissenting voices.
Psychiatrist Donald Grant's case is especially troubling because he is a distinguished doctor whose writings have been praised by judges and fellow psychiatrists for shining a light into the dark world of violence committed by the mentally ill, His book, Killer Instinct: Having a Mind for Murder (MUP) sparked instant controversy.
Margaret McMurdo, a past president of the Court of Appeal, said Grant's book provided a valuable insight into forensic psychiatry and the legal system "including difficulties in predicting dangerousness". "Who hasn't wondered if given a particular set of circumstances or mental illness, they might be driven to kill another?" she said.
"Forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant, whose reports I read with confidence during my 26 years as a judge, explores that and other big questions, such as who is capable of rehabilitation, who has rehabilitated, and who is beyond redemption."
Grant has been interviewing killers for 40 years to determine whether they are fit enough to stand trial. I was shocked when The Courier-Mail reported recently that a complaint referred by Queensland Health may (or may not) see Grant facing charges of professional misconduct. His valuable book may be suppressed.
I'm wondering who the hell gave the incompetent health department the power to censor books. How dare they? With elective surgery waiting lists among the worst in the nation, the health chiefs should be concentrating their efforts elsewhere. Grant is a genuine expert whose opinions should be circulated by Queensland Health, not censored.
The book necessarily contains lurid details of crimes. In writing it, Grant has done exactly what journalists do every day. In fact Grant quotes from The Courier-Mail interviews with victims' families in some chapters. His book featured a sadomasochistic cross-dresser who brutally raped and murdered a 21-year-old girl, a mother who hid an infant's body in a washing machine and the loving wife who cut her husband's throat from ear to ear.
Grant told me in an exclusive interview two years ago he did not set out to sensationalise the cases. He simply sought to "increase our understanding of why violence and murder happens". The facts in themselves are shocking, he told me. "I haven't exaggerated or sought to create sensation in any way."
A complaint against Grant was driven by Sonia Anderson about a passage on the strangulation murder of her daughter Bianca, a decade ago. However, in my view Grant did not act unethically. The details of the case were already on the public record.
A free speech battle of a different sort is being played out in the intelligence community. Lawyer Bernard Collaery is being prosecuted for revealing national secrets; specifically, that Australia bugged East Timor's government building in 2004 to gain advantage in crucial oil and gas negotiations. He faces two years in jail.
Details of the case were smothered when Attorney-General Christian Porter used his national security powers to have the hearing held behind closed doors. Collaery, rightly, is critical of the secrecy. "I want to defend myself in public," he said. "That's the hallmark of our democracy, a public trial. I'm charged with conspiring with Witness K, my client, who I interviewed in the same way I have for 40, nearly 50 years."
Witness K is a former senior ASIS intelligence officer-turned whistleblower who led the bugging operations in Dili. Criminal charges against Collaery and K were filed by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in July 2018. We may never know what happens.
Not all censorship comes from governments or the courts. Self-censorship by the media is perhaps the most disdainful. Pauline Hanson was dumped from her regular spot on by Nine's Today Show for saying people in a COVID-19 lockdown Melbourne apartments were drug addicts and alcoholics not too concerned with social distancing. In response, Nine news director Darren Wick adopted a lecturing tone.
I thought he sounded like a social worker. "We don't shy away from diverse opinions and robust debate on the Today Show," he said. "But this morning's accusations from Pauline Hanson were ill-informed and divisive. At a time of uncertainty in this national and global health crisis, Australians have to be united and supportive of one another. We need to get through this together," he said
Infuriating as Hanson can be she was partly right. Daniel Andrews, the Victorian premier, confirmed that some in the apartments had alcohol and drug problems. So the head of a major news network got away with censoring a federal politician on flimsy grounds. That, to me, was not an insignificant breach of free speech and betrayal of journalism.
From the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" of 11 July, 2020
13 July, 2020
Penn State deletes what snowflakes call "disgusting" tweet affirming conservative students
After intense backlash, the Pennsylvania State University liberal arts department deleted a tweet ensuring conservative students that their voices matter. The original tweet was a picture with the title “Dear Students: You Belong Here” followed by various affirmations of black, Muslim, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ students. It also had a message for conservatives: “Dear conservative students, your viewpoints are important.”
Penn State’s student newspaper The Daily Collegian published students’ thoughts on the tweet. According to one student, “Conservatives in the United States do not live in a system that was built from the blood and trauma of their ancestors — a system that continues to put down people who look like [their ancestors] every day.”
The same student also stated her belief that conservatives did not experience the same oppression as her ancestors. She was disappointed that Penn State failed to include victims of sexual assault and rape: “To me, this just shows where Penn State's priorities lie.”
Another student said that her voice as an African-American was drowned out by the tweet.
“The fact that Penn State cannot even come up with their own flyer to spew their lies of solidarity and support is disgusting," the student said.
A third student declared that Penn State’s silence is deafening: “This administration needs to combat racism with a comprehensive plan to uplift the Black community not only at University Park but at all commonwealth campuses, or else it will bring them unbearable consequences that will hurt them in the long run.”
Penn State Director of Strategic Communications William Hessert, Jr told Campus Reform that the tweet was deleted because, while it was meant “to express the inclusive, democratic and participatory values of the liberal arts,” the “message was not being received well and it is important for us that our messages be received as intended.”
“While we do not believe in deleting our posts, given the sensitivities of the matter we felt that it was better to remove it,” Hessert added.
SOURCE
Georgetown senate publicly condemns student for rejecting Black Lives Matter movement
The Georgetown University Student Senate voted in favor of a resolution denouncing a conservative student’s blog post.
William Torgerson, a student at Georgetown University, wrote a blog post called A Nation of Virtuous Individuals in which he condemned the Black Lives Matter movement. He also made another blog post - which is now-deleted but the GUSA had obtained screenshots of - where he wrote that “being depressed is not normal.”
In the most recent post, Torgerson wrote that “Black Lives Matter is a movement entirely based in unfalsifiable ideological possession, and it does not deserve your support.”
He also commented on the recent Supreme Court decision which extended the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect gender identity and sexual orientation as “a leap of judicial activism.” Torgerson wrote that “this precedent is frustrating because now, in legal terms, 'sex,' 'sexual orientation,' and 'gender identity' will have no technical distinction.”
In response to these claims, the GUSA Senate drafted a resolution to condemn Torgerson for using rhetoric which “is racist, ignorant, discriminatory, demeaning, and hateful." The resolution claims that by Torgerson writing “the United States of America is not systemically racist today,” he “negates the existence of institutional racism.”
Javon Price, one of the three Chairs for Students For Trump at Georgetown, told Campus Reform in an email, “universities are supposed to be locations where we have intellectual discourse. Whether or not we agree with the statement is irrelevant, the simple fact that there’s a campaign to ostracize him for attempting to engage in a national, if not global, conversation is ludicrous. And we wonder why people take to the streets?”
Price added that while "there are some things in the article that Billy wrote that I may personally disagree with," the student government's action against him is a step too far.
Jacob Adams, secretary of Georgetown Republicans, also told Campus Reform that “students are routinely harassed online by their peers for contrarian opinions at Georgetown. It is not a good college environment for conservatives or simply people who disagree with whatever is the prevailing political push. As it stands right now, I would not recommend Georgetown to any prospective student, and I would strongly discourage alumni from donating to the university until they clearly demonstrate Republicans and conservatives are welcome on campus.”
SOURCE
12 July, 2020
Complete censorship of a common type of news
Reddit, barely a week after purging the Donald Trump community and 2,000 other subreddits for racism or offensive content, will no longer allow “any content that shows POC [persons of color] as the aggressor.”
Human Events managing editor Ian Miles Cheong noticed the new policy going into effect late Tuesday night.
Reddit Racism
Oh, sweet irony — reverse racism is still racism, or at least that’s what I was taught.
“In case you think that post was fake or posted by a troll,” Cheong added, “it’s not.” Apparently the notice came from “the r/JusticeServed automoderator bot — so a moderator (or team) on the community’s staff put it up.”
The official announcement was “removed because all the replies were negative.”
Reddit Racism Cowards
So I guess it’s safe to conclude two things: Reddit users are much more sensible than management is, and Reddit management doesn’t even have the courage of their hypocrisy.
Some of the best responses from upset Reddit users:
“In your pursuit of anti-racism, you’ve managed to become racists yourselves.”
“Is this satire? It has got to be right? Literally big brother didn’t go to this extent.”
“We can tell our kids we remember a time when they started shutting down the truth.”
SOURCE
California Couple Charged With 'Hate Crime' for Expressing Their Opinion
Two California residents from Martinez have been charged with a hate crime after disagreeing with Black Lives Matter.
Did they call Black Lives Matter protesters the “N” word? Did they hurl racist epithets at people of color? Perhaps they posted something really nasty on Facebook?
No. They covered over a small section of a Black Lives Matter mural and were heard saying “All lives matter.”
Fox News:
“We must address the root and byproduct of systemic racism in our country. The Black Lives Matter movement is an important civil rights cause that deserves all of our attention,” District Attorney Diana Becton said.
The mural was perfectly legal. A local resident obtained a permit to paint it. Defacing it or trying to cover it is a crime — the misdemeanor crime of vandalism.
But Nicole Anderson, 42, and David Richard Nelson, 53 now face a year in jail because they have become victims of the hysteria and fear to grip the United States.
Cellphone video recorded by a witness allegedly showed Anderson using black paint and a roller brush to cover over the mural, specifically the letters “B” and “L” in the word “Black” on the Fourth of July.
A heated confrontation ensued between supporters of the mural and Nelson, who was allegedly heard yelling “All lives matter!”
You can’t say that in the New America. It doesn’t acknowledge the “systemic racism” in the country or treat blacks as victims.
The two were charged with violation of civil rights, vandalism under $400, and possession of tools to commit vandalism or graffiti, according to the district attorney’s office.
There are some political analysts who believe that actions like this by the mob will re-elect Donald Trump. More likely the backlash will not come peacefully at the ballot box but rather not so peacefully on the streets of America.
SOURCE
10 July, 2020
Leftists Freak Out After Noam Chomsky and Other Liberal Voices Declare Support for Free Speech
On Tuesday, Harper’s Magazine published an open letter co-signed mostly by prominent left-wing voices decrying the “intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty,” that has become fashionable amongst the younger generation of liberals. “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter warned. “This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time.”
Signatories to the letter include Margaret Atwood, Gloria Steinem, J.K. Rowling, Matthew Yglesias, and other recognizable names within the entertainment industry, journalism, and academia, including famed left-wing anti-capitalist Noam Chomsky.
“Imagine going back in time and telling yourself in 2003 that the left would go too far for Noam Chomsky,” wrote Inez Stepman of The Federalist in response to the letter.
Naturally, liberals are freaking out, attacking Chomsky and others, predictably calling for them to be canceled.
SOURCE
Then They Came For Stefan Molyneux
On paper it may seem like Big Tech companies are separate businesses, but in practice they act unilaterally when it comes to purging WrongThink and pushing “woke” narratives.
Stefan Molyneux, a philosopher and popular online commentator, was suspended from Twitter today. About a week ago he was banned from YouTube where he had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and spent over a decade creating content.
Just days ago it was revealed that Stefan, along with many others, is allegedly included on an internal blacklist at Paypal. This should come as no surprise though being that he has already been banned from Paypal since November 2019.
Gab suffered a similar fate in the Fall of 2018 when Paypal banned us “just because.” As recently as this week Paypal’s CEO positioned himself as some sort of martyr for banning Gab and others. Stunning and brave.
Stefan joins the ranks of Thought Criminals who speak a little too freely online for the progressive overlords. Thankfully Stefan was wise enough to get on Gab many years ago and spend time investing into building an audience on the platform.
As I write this the slack-jawed leftists on Twitter are cheering and rejoicing over Stefan’s bans. This boring and predictable cackling is not what I want you to pay attention to though.
Instead, I want you to center your focus on the total silence from the Conservative Inc frauds who boast about how much they love free speech and hate big tech censorship. You won’t find them defending Stefan. You won’t find them speaking out against his bans. You won’t find them saying anything at all.
SOURCE
9 July, 2020
The University of Chicago is a green light school. That doesn’t mean speech is free
In September before my freshman year, I received a text from a stranger. She’d heard that I was interested in studying Russian and, as a fellow student at the University of Chicago, she offered me advice about the university’s language departments. We began a lengthy Facebook correspondence, and I was truly excited. An older UChicago student had taken time out of her busy summer schedule to contact me — and her support made my transition to college easier. I was thankful for her kindness.
Fast forward a few weeks and I’d moved into my dorm. I ran into this same older student often, but she rarely acknowledged me. And when we did speak, she was surprisingly unfriendly. At first, I didn’t understand. We hadn’t gotten into a fight. She barely even knew me. Then, I overheard her describe me to one of her friends. “That’s that Republican girl,” she said. The statement was true — I am Republican — but she meant it as an insult. My friends later told me that she was warning people to stop interacting with me, merely because I was on the “wrong” side of the political spectrum. She came to this conclusion without ever confronting me about it. To this day, we’ve never discussed the underlying “issue” of my political beliefs.
My point in telling this story is not to play the victim. I am vocal about my political beliefs, and I recognize that my speech has social consequences — as it should. It makes sense that individuals will surround themselves with people whose voices they admire and enjoy. But the problem here is not that I was judged for my words, but that I was ostracized without ever being given a meaningful opportunity to “explain myself.”
SOURCE
Woman loses her job after being filmed yelling ‘white lives are better’ at Black Lives Matter protesters
Sheer racism. You are allowed to praise one race only
A woman has been fired from her job after yelling racial slurs at Black Lives Matter protesters during a Tennessee rally.
Sonya Holt is no longer an employee at the Keith Family Vision Clinic in Johnson City, her ex-bosses have confirmed.
Holt was stripped of her job after video footage went viral over the weekend that shows her repeatedly chanting: 'White lives matter, white lives are better'.
She can also be heard saying: 'White lives matter you black crazy twisted person'.
Demonstrators for the New Panther Initiative, a Black Lives Matter group, had gathered at Covered Bright Park in Elizabethton to protest against racial inequality and police brutality over the weekend.
But counter-protesters, including Holt, flocked to the scene to jeer at demonstrators as they entered the park.
SOURCE
8 July, 2020
UK: How did Graham Linehan, the creator of Father Ted, become the most hated man on the internet?
It’s been quite a descent for Graham Linehan: from co-creator of the much-loved Father Ted – much loved, because it’s, well, so lovely and loveable – to a much-despised figure for his years-long campaign against trans ideology.
Linehan is also the co-creator and/or writer of popular comedies The IT Crowd, Black Books, Big Train and Motherland. But his more recent position, at the centre of the trans debate’s most toxic area, has been deeply unfunny. Now Linehan has been permanently suspended from Twitter.
A Twitter spokesperson said that Linehan’s @Glinner account had been “permanently suspended after repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation.” It was reportedly – and finally – shut down after tweeting “men aren’t women tho” in response to the Women's Institute -- a UK-based women's organization -- wishing happy Pride Month to its transgender members.
SOURCE
Now you are not allowed to criticize the media?
Away co-CEO Steph Korey is planning to step down a second time amid an uproar over her Instagram posts bashing journalists and the news media.
The luggage start-up’s impending leadership change comes after some Away staffers reportedly expressed concerns about the posts in an email to company honchos, saying Ms Korey was putting her reputation ahead of her company and employees.
Posting on her Instagram Story this week, Ms Korey suggested that journalists target female executives because stories about them get more “clicks”.
She also mused that it should be easier to sue news organisations for defamation because “misrepresentation *is* the business model of some outlets”.
“I know there are a few [journalists] who are using the media platform they have access to further their careers by knowingly misrepresenting female founders for clicks $ their own profile/fame,” Ms Korey wrote, according to screenshots of the posts shared on Twitter.
SOURCE
7 July, 2020
Visa blacklist hits free speech website
Andrew Torba
As many of you already know we learned last week that Visa blacklisted Gab and we are now unable to process credit and debit card transactions. We learned more information this week and I think it’s important that I share it as a warning for others.
It’s not just Gab that is blacklisted. It’s also my family.
In China there is something called the Social Credit System, which was developed by the Communist Chinese Party as a “national reputation system.” This system tracks the “trustworthiness” of individuals, businesses, and organizations. “Trustworthiness” here means total and complete submission to the Chinese Communist Party. If the Communist Party deems you to be untrustworthy, you are denied access to plane tickets, train tickets, opening and operating businesses, and more.
To most Americans this sounds horrifying, and it is. I now know from first-hand experience because this social credit system exists in the United States. While it may not be sanctioned by the United States government, it most certainly has been deployed by US corporations who today have in many ways more power, data, and control over our lives than our government does. Many of these corporations also happen to be endorsing and raising money for communist organizations, revolutionaries, and the domestic terrorists burning down our cities.
We were told this week that not only is Gab blacklisted by Visa as a business, but my personal name, phone number, address, and more are all also blacklisted by Visa. If I wanted to leave Gab tomorrow (something that isn’t going to happen) and start a lemonade stand I wouldn’t be able to obtain merchant processing for it.
Simply because my name is Andrew Torba.
If my wife wants to start a business she won’t be able to obtain merchant processing because she lives at the same address as me and would be flagged by Visa.
This is obviously very concerning. We have done nothing wrong. Gab is and always has been a legally operated business. We sell hats, shirts, and a software subscription service that unlocks new features on Gab. My personal credit score is in the 800’s. I pay my bills. I have a wife and daughter to provide for, yet we are all being punished and defamed because someone at Visa has it out for me.
We were told that Visa has someone camping on our website watching our payment processing. As soon as we get a new processor up they find out who it is on their end and contact them. They tell the processor that Gab is flagged for “illegal activity” and if they do not stop processing payments for us they will be heavily fined.
When the processor inquires about this alleged “illegal activity,” Visa tells them that Gab has been flagged for “hate speech.” “Hate speech,” is of course not illegal in the United States of America and is protected by the First Amendment. As I have written, it’s not real and I refuse to acknowledge it as term. Visa doesn’t agree with me.
The reason I share all of this is that I hope it serves as a wakeup call and as a warning.
If they can do this to me, they can do it to you and they likely will.
Email from Gab News: GabNews@mailer.gab.com
Censorship by billionaires, applauded by the left
The Facebook boycott shows that the prospects for online freedom are bleak
Interesting to see how long this pic stays up
Multi-billion-dollar companies are demanding that other multi-billion-dollar companies censor what we can say and read online, and liberals and left-wingers are applauding. If you want an insight into how deranged and unprincipled supposed progressives have become, it doesn’t get much clearer than this.
This of course is the Facebook boycott, the decision of more than 300 advertisers, including corporate giants Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pfizer, to pause their advertising with the social-media giant until it does more to moderate content and, in particular, censor ‘hate speech’.
That so many people can’t see this for what it is – the mega rich demanding limits on what we all can read and say online – is remarkable. A headline on Axios refers to the boycott, with a straight face, as a ‘bottom-up revolution’, while also noting that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are involved behind the scenes. Because, as we know, all the best ‘bottom-up revolutions’ are launched by billionaires and literal royals.
That this was primarily sparked by two posts by Donald Trump is even more ridiculous. On 26 May, Trump posted about mail-in ballots in California, spreading baseless doubts about voter fraud in the state. A few days later, on 29 May, he posted ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’ in response to the riots breaking out across the US following the death of George Floyd, urging tougher action by the authorities.
Twitter decided to flag the posts, fact-checking the former and posting a warning label over the latter. But Facebook decided to leave the posts up, without any additional flags or labels – arguing, quite reasonably, that social-media companies should not be meddling in how elected politicians speak to the public.
This was met with fury among advertisers and even Facebook’s staff – who staged a ‘virtual walkout’ last month in protest against this refusal to take action on Trump’s ‘hateful rhetoric’.
That these people seem to think it is justifiable, or frankly even practical, to cancel a democratically elected president speaks to their remarkable moral arrogance. Facebook has now said it will effectively bring its policies on public figures who break the rules in line with those of Twitter – ie, leaving offending posts up, given they are in the public interest, but flagging them appropriately. But critics who had previously cheered Twitter’s response immediately said the changes ‘didn’t go far enough’. Perhaps they won’t be happy until Trump is handed a permanent ban.
Regardless of what one thinks of Trump, this really isn’t about him. Free speech is as much about the right of people to listen and decide for themselves as it is about the right of speakers to say whatever they want. Censorship is always motored more by fear of a supposedly gullible public than it is of a supposedly incendiary speaker. This was certainly clear from comments made by Rashad Robinson, of the organisation Color of Change, who criticised Facebook’s supposedly meagre rule change, saying that allowing the public to ‘judge for themselves’ whether a post by a public figure is false or hateful simply ‘won’t cut it’.
That, amid all this, Facebook has been painted as hopelessly laissez-faire suggests online freedom is in real trouble. Because Facebook is hardly some bastion of free-speech fundamentalism.
SOURCE
6 July, 2020
Walmart yanks “All Lives Matter” merchandise from its website
“Walmart is no longer selling ‘All Lives Matter’ clothing on its website after coming under fire for the merchandise, which references the Black Lives Matter movement and mantra.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer has removed those items sold by its third-party Marketplace vendors ‘indefinitely’ after some associates and customers raised concerns. ‘We fundamentally believe all lives do matter and every individual deserves respect,’ the company said in a written statement.
‘However, as we listened, we came to understand that the way some, but not all, people are using the phrase ‘All Lives Matter’ in the current environment intentionally minimized the focus on the painful reality of racial inequity.'”
SOURCE
California’s Governor Forbids Christians From Singing in Church Houses
Golden State Christians have been ordered by California's governor to stop singing in church. This is a direct assault on the First Amendment, as I warned folks about in my new book, "Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation."
"Californians are still free to attend their house of worship. But they’re forbidden from singing or chanting," read the lead paragraph in a story published by the Sacramento Bee.
The new guidance for places of worship was issued on July 1.
"Discontinue singing (in rehearsals, services, etc.), chanting, and other practices and performances where there is increased likelihood for transmission from contaminated exhaled droplets. Consider practicing these activities through alternative methods (such as internet streaming) that ensure individual congregation members perform these activities separately in their own homes," the 14-page order reads.
The previous guidelines only encouraged churches to "strongly consider" ending corporate worship, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The governor's office did not indicate how he intends to enforce the law. Can you imagine the optics of National Guard troops storming into California church houses and arresting choir members for singing, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God"?
Dr. Paul Chappell, the pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church, a mega-church north of Los Angeles, told The Todd Starnes Show that his congregation plans on singing even louder.
"First the state told us when to worship. Now they are telling us "how" to worship," he said. "We have been patient, and safe (even wearing masks). Our church will sing to the Lord Sunday. The heavens declare His glory and so will we."
It really is the only proper pastoral response to such an unconstitutional edict.
SOURCE
5 July, 2020
Israel Orders Evangelical GOD TV Off Air
“Israel’s media watchdog said Sunday that it had withdrawn the broadcast licence from US-based evangelical network GOD TV, accusing it of seeking to target Jews with Christian content.
International Christian network’s GOD TV launched its Shelanu (Hebrew for ‘ours’) channel at the end of April on Israeli cable provider Hot, describing it as catering to Christians.
But the channel provoked an immediate outcry in Israel, with then-communications minister David Amsalem accusing it of being a ‘missionary channel’ seeking to convert Jews to Christianity.
… Israel enjoys vigorous support from evangelical movements in the United States but keeps a lid on missionary work in the Holy Land. While Israeli law only expressly forbids the giving of money or gifts to encourage conversions to another religion, missionary activities in general are closely monitored by the authorities and are offensive to many Israelis.”
SOURCE
Finland's air force drops swastika emblem after century in use
Until recently the country’s Air Force Command emblem depicted a pair of wings around a swastika, a symbol which pre-dates its associations with Nazism.
The change was first observed by Teivo Teivainen, a politics professor at the University of Helsinki, who argued its negative associations made the swastika's ongoing use politically fraught.
Professor Teivainen, who has written widely on the issue, said using the swastika could cause difficulties for the Nato country, particularly if worn on the uniforms of deployed personnel.
“I have not found many reasonable arguments to support its military usefulness,” Mr Teivainen wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
The symbol’s association with Finland’s air force dates to its founding in 1918, when Swedish count Eric von Rosen donated a plane painted with swastikas to the newly independent country.
The German Nazi Party adopted the swastika as its logo in 1920.
Finland removed the swastika from its aircraft following a postwar armistice with the Soviet Union, but until recently the symbol remained on Air Force Command emblems and some flags and decorations.
A spokesman for Finland’s air force told the BBC, "as unit emblems are worn on uniform, it was considered impractical and unnecessary to continue using the old unit emblem, which had caused misunderstandings from time to time."
The current emblem of the air force is a circle of wings around a golden eagle, another symbol used by the force since 1945.
Professor Teivainen has coined a phrase in Finnish to explain how the use of a swastika could be problematic despite its innocent origin. Roughly translated, "visuaalinen natsahtavuusaste" means "how much something exhibits visual cues that are associated with Nazis".
“This is not a question about manipulating historical records by removing controversial symbols such as the swastika from museums or history books,” he wrote in 2016.
“This is about the way the Republic of Finland wants to present its armed forces today.
SOURCE
3 July, 2020
Sky News cuts off ex-Met Police chief after he says officers have 'given up' trying to stop young black men carrying weapons and accuses BLM of aiming to destabilise society
Sky News has been accused of shutting down a former Scotland Yard chief for claiming Black Lives Matter is deliberately stirring up a false anti-police narrative.
Ex-chief superintendent Kevin Hurley claimed senior figures in the movement were waging a 'misinformation' campaign to 'destabilise and disrupt' society.
He also suggested the ugly clashes in Brixton on Wednesday night were products of Afro-Caribbean single parenting and said constables had 'given up' enforcing the law on young black Britons for fear of jeopardising their careers.
Anchor Adam Boulton challenged Mr Hurley and suggested it was unhelpful to view the violence through the prism of race - before later cutting him off entirely when the former top brass was in full flow.
The abrupt end to the interview sparked accusations online that Sky News did not want to air 'uncomfortable' opinions, but this has been vehemently denied by Boulton who insisted he was constricted by rigid time slots.
Reacting to the violence in Brixton, Mr Hurley, who also served as Surrey's Police and Crime Commissioner, said yesterday: 'The only way you're going to deal with this is with social intervention to get upstream and manage the problems that comes with single parenting, particularly among young African-Caribbean women.
'And I'm talking about intervening and supporting women when the children are three to four years of age, to prevent them going down this route of rebelliousness and often offending.'
He added: 'We've got into a vicious circle with police officers dealing with young black people, who always come to the perspective that the police are trying to suppress them.
'And the police very quickly come to learn that dealing with young black people is quite frankly aggravation that puts their careers and mortgages at risk.
'That's the reason why so many black youth are killing each other in London, because the police have given up trying to stop them carrying knives and guns and killing each other.'
Boulton picked Mr Hurley up on his claims, and retorted: 'Do you think it is really helpful at this time of heightened concern over Black Lives Matter to see this so clearly in racial terms.'
But the ex-police chief swatted away the anchor's critcism and insisted that 'this is not a BAME issue, this is an issue relating to people of West African heritage in terms of the relationship between the police and the public'.
He pressed on: 'There's an awful lot of misinformation going on about police killing black people in custody.
'Last year 16 people died for various reasons in police custody - largely from drug overdoses - of those 16, only one was black.
'Last year the police shot three people dead - only one was black. There is a narrative going on here, I think driven by people within the Black Lives Matter movement who want to destabilise and disrupt society.'
But as he went to start another sentence, Bolton suddenly interjected: 'Ok we're going to have to leave it there, thank you very much indeed,' and the video feed to Mr Hurley was cut off.
The hasty wrapping up of the interview was seized upon by many on Twitter, who hit out at the presenter directly.
But Boulton slapped down his critics and tweeted: 'I didn't (cut him off). But we are subject to automatic cut-offs for ad breaks, half hours, top of the hour and even the weather.
'We aim to give all guests the time to have their say and normally succeed.'
The presenter, who tweets in a personal capacity, also said: 'There have been incidents of bad crowd behaviour by all sorts of people around the UK, not just those singled out by Kevin Hurley.'
Sky News declined to comment.
Some viewers took to Twitter to voice their outrage at Mr Hurley's comments.
Luke Hubbard, whose profile says he is a PhD student and hate crime researcher, said: 'This is absolute garbage from Kevin Hurley!'
SOURCE
Leftist Wordplay
The "social justice" cultural revolutionaries change the definition of words to confuse and confound.
“We need to have a conversation about… [fill in any myriad of leftist social-justice causes]” is a popular tactic used by today’s “woke” culture that means precisely the opposite of what is suggested. As Power Line’s Steven Hayward puts it, “What ‘we need a conversation’ means in practice is, ‘You shut up and agree with the left.’” Or, in the parlance of “The Princess Bride’s” Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
This Orwellian tactic of subtly redefining words and terms is not new, but it has proven highly effective in both confusing people and intentionally conflating issues. It’s the same tactic used by Black Lives Matter. As we have repeatedly noted, if BLM was truly concerned about ending violence against black lives, then why the objection to focusing on the biggest causes of violence and injustice against blacks in America — the disproportionally high crime rate in black neighborhoods (almost entirely perpetrated by other blacks) and abortion (which takes exponentially more black lives than any other single factor)? It’s impossible to take a complaint or grievance seriously when those espousing it don’t actually mean what they’re saying. Once again, the BLM movement is not really about bettering the lives of black Americans but about pushing a neo-Marxist revolution.
Yet another example of this leftist wordplay is the term “inclusion.” This one is especially popular when a school, organization, or business seeks to justify its decision to dismiss or cancel an individual or relationship with someone with the “wrong” opinion. How many times have we seen the self-contradictory statement, “[So and so] was expelled/fired because they failed to uphold our school/company’s commitment to diversity and ‘inclusion’”? Logically, if leftists claim to be committed to “inclusion,” then how could they “exclude” anyone? The simple answer is that in the Left’s lexicon, “inclusion” refers not to a commitment to accept all individuals but rather to promote the exclusive idea that only the Left’s views are just and virtuous.
In the end, the rallying motto for conservatives concerned with upholding principles of truth and consistency in language might be Accurate Definitions Matter. For without a commitment to consistently accurate definitions, there can be no genuine conversations and no hope for unalloyed unity.
SOURCE
2 July, 2020
Coronavirus: How Donald Trump created an uproar – and a new slogan for his supporters – with two words
Several days after the President used the term “Kung flu” at a rally in Tulsa, it continues to reverberate with both his supporters and opponents.
“It’s a disease that without question has more names than any disease in history,” Mr Trump said at the rally last Sunday, Australian time.
“I can name Kung Flu, I can name 19 different versions of names. Many call it a virus, which it is. Many call it a flu; what difference?”
His use of the words drew a widespread ongoing backlash as a racist slur against Asian-Americans.
By the time he reached his second rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, Mr Trump’s supporters were chanting the phrase before he had even opened his mouth.
“Kung flu — yeah,” he said on stage, to roars of approval from the young crowd. “Kung flu.”
SOURCE
Reddit Purges 2,000+ Communities Including The_Donald
Reddit has purged some of the most popular communities on the site today after a recent announcement that they will be cracking down on “hate speech.” Over 2,000 communities were purged including the pro-Trump community r/The_Donald and the popular left-wing community r/ChapoTrapHouse.
Last year Reddit took $150m investment from the Communist Chinese, so these bans and the pivot away from freedom should not be a surprise to anyone. Reddit is not only purging thousands of communities from the site, but they are also banning users who “upvote” content that breaks their new “hate speech” rules. Meaning even if you don’t post the content yourself, Reddit will ban you if you engage with it.
“I have to admit that I’ve struggled with balancing my values as an American, and around free speech and free expression, with my values and the company’s values around common human decency,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said.
Perhaps all that communist Chinese money made his decision a little easier.
At Gab we saw this purge and wave of censorship coming years ago. Which is why we have been building the market-leading free speech social network that now has millions of users from around the world. We welcome everyone who is getting banned from Reddit–both on the left and the right ideologically– to join Gab.
Gab has a groups feature which is similar to Reddit’s subreddit functionality. Users have already set up a The_Donald group on Gab with 14,000 members. Get on Gab, and speak freely.
SOURCE
1 July, 2020
Zuckerberg caves and says Facebook WILL ban hate speech in its ads and put warning labels on 'harmful' posts by public figures after nearly 100 advertisers boycotted the tech giant
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced new content policies for the platform, including tighter restrictions on advertising and labels for 'harmful' posts from public figures, following an advertising boycott campaign.
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live video on Friday that the company would begin labeling 'harmful' content from politicians that remains 'newsworthy'.
Though he did not name President Donald Trump, the policy comes in response to a campaign demanding Facebook impose tighter restrictions on 'misinformation' in the president's campaign ads, and on his inflammatory posts.
Twitter has already slapped warning labels on some of the president's tweets that it deemed abusive or threatening, and unlike Facebook, Twitter banned all political campaign ads.
Zuckerberg slammed the move when Twitter first labeled a Trump tweet, saying it wasn't up to social media companies to be the 'arbiters of truth' - but the Facebook CEO appears to have had a change of heart following the punishing advertiser boycott.
'We will soon start labeling some of the content we leave up because it is deemed newsworthy, so people can know when this is the case,' Zuckerberg said in the livestream.
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook Live video on Friday that the company would begin labeling 'harmful' content from politicians that remains 'newsworthy'
'We'll allow people to share this content to condemn it, just like we do with other problematic content, because this is an important part of how we discuss what's acceptable in our society - but we'll add a prompt to tell people that the content they're sharing may violate our policies,' he continued.
Zuckerberg also announced new policies cracking down on hateful language in ads, as well as guidelines on voting information.
'We already restrict certain types of content in ads that we allow in regular posts, but we want to do more to prohibit the kind of divisive and inflammatory language that has been used to sow discord,' Zuckerberg said.
'So today we're prohibiting a wider category of hateful content in ads. Specifically, we're expanding our ads policy to prohibit claims that people from a specific race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity or immigration status are a threat to the physical safety, health or survival of others,' he said.
SOURCE
"The West Australian" blasted over racist Indigenous cartoon
The term "Aborigine" is NOT offensive. It is the normal term for Australian blacks and is Latin for "from the beginning" -- so recognizes their priority.
And "Abo" is simply an abbreviation. Australians are great abbreviators so "Abo" is a normal abbreviation with no offensive intentions
It is however true that some Leftists have recently pushed the Canadian term "First peoples" as an alternstive term. Ironic that the term Aborigine says the same thing in Latin
And some Aborigines use their tribal name as an identification (Murri", Boori" etc.) But such names are too specific to be generally useful. "Boong" appears to have originally been a tribal name but is now a derogatory name for Aborigines generally
The West Australian newspaper is copping backlash after publishing a cartoon that refers to an Indigenous character using an offensive racial slur and compares them to a dog.
The Modesty Blaise comic, published yesterday, shows characters discussing an Indigenous tracker who is trying to find them.
One character says they are being chased by “four men, all armed ... and an Aborigine” — a term some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people find offensive.
The characters go on to describe the Indigenous character as an “abo tracker”.
“It’s no use hiding, that abo will smell us out quicker than a bloodhound,” a character says in the comic.
The publication is being blasted on social media with many labelling it “disgusting”.
“Just wondering how many people were involved in the chain of decision making, to allow this cartoon to be printed in the @westaustralian newspaper in 2020?” asked radio and television presenter Shelley Ware.
“I’m literally devastated this has been printed and our children have access to this. Honestly wish I was surprised though!!”
Late on Monday evening, The West Australian published an apology to its website stating the cartoon was written in 1981 and was supplied by an outside agency.
SOURCE
BACKGROUND NOTES
This is Tongue-Tied 3. Posts by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
HOME (Index page)
Is the American national anthem politically incorrect From the 4th verse:
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
Mohammad
The truth can be offensive to some but it must be said
The war on "cultural appropriation" is straightforward racism
"HATE SPEECH" is free speech: The U.S. Supreme Court stated the general rule regarding protected speech in Texas v. Johnson (109 S.Ct. at 2544), when it held: "The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable." Federal courts have consistently followed this. Said Virginia federal district judge Claude Hilton: "The First Amendment does not recognize exceptions for bigotry, racism, and religious intolerance or ideas or matters some may deem trivial, vulgar or profane."
Even some advocacy of violence is protected by the 1st Amendment. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the U.S. Supreme Court held unanimously that speech advocating violent illegal actions to bring about social change is protected by the First Amendment "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
The double standard: Atheists can put up signs and billboards saying that Christianity is wrong and that is hunky dory. But if a Christian says that homosexuality is wrong, that is attacked as "hate speech"
One for the militant atheists to consider: "...it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" -- Thomas Jefferson
"I think no subject should be off-limits, and I regard the laws in many Continental countries criminalizing Holocaust denial as philosophically repugnant and practically useless – in that they confirm to Jew-haters that the Jews control everything (otherwise why aren’t we allowed to talk about it)" -- Mark Steyn
A prophetic comment on Norwegian hate speech laws: As Justice Brandeis once noted, repressive censorship “breeds hate” and “that hate menaces stable government,” rather than promoting safety; “the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies.”
Voltaire's most famous saying was actually a summary of Voltaire's thinking by one of his biographers rather than something Voltaire said himself. Nonetheless it is a wholly admirable sentiment: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". I am of a similar mind.
The traditional advice about derogatory speech: "Sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you". Apparently people today are not as emotionally robust as their ancestors were.
The KKK were members of the DEMOCRATIC party. Google "Klanbake" if you doubt it
A phobia is an irrational fear, so the terms "Islamophobic" and "homophobic" embody a claim that the people so described are mentally ill. There is no evidence for either claim. Both terms are simply abuse masquerading as diagnoses and suggest that the person using them is engaged in propaganda rather than in any form of rational or objective discourse.
Leftists often pretend that any mention of race is "racist" -- unless they mention it, of course. But leaving such irrational propaganda aside, which statements really are racist Can statements of fact about race be "racist" Such statements are simply either true or false. The most sweeping possible definition of racism is that a racist statement is a statement that includes a negative value judgment of some race. Absent that, a statement is not racist, for all that Leftists might howl that it is. Facts cannot be racist so nor is the simple statement of them racist. Here is a statement that cannot therefore be racist by itself, though it could be false: "Blacks are on average much less intelligent than whites". If it is false and someone utters it, he could simply be mistaken or misinformed.
Categorization is a basic human survival skill so racism as the Left define it (i.e. any awareness of race) is in fact neither right nor wrong. It is simply human
Whatever your definition of racism, however, a statement that simply mentions race is not thereby racist -- though one would think otherwise from American Presidential election campaigns. Is a statement that mentions dogs, "doggist" or a statement that mentions cats, "cattist"
If any mention of racial differences is racist then all Leftists are racist too -- as "affirmative action" is an explicit reference to racial differences
Was Abraham Lincoln a racist "You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. It is better for both, therefore, to be separated." -- Spoken at the White House to a group of black community leaders, August 14th, 1862
Gimlet-eyed Leftist haters sometimes pounce on the word "white" as racist. Will the time come when we have to refer to the White House as the "Full spectrum of light" House
The spirit of liberty is "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." and "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it." -- Judge Learned Hand
Mostly, a gaffe is just truth slipping out
Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor" "right" "freedom" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)
First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean
It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.
It seems a pity that the wisdom of the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus is now little known. Remember, wrote the Stoic thinker, "that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you. Wherefore make it your endeavour not to let your impressions carry you away."
"Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason" -- English poet John Milton (1608-1674) in Areopagitica
Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener's inability to offer an intelligent response
Leftists can try to get you fired from your job over something that you said and that's not an attack on free speech. But if you just criticize something that they say, then that IS an attack on free speech
"Negro" is a forbidden word -- unless a Democrat uses it
"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper
Why are Leftists always talking about hate Because it fills their own hearts
Leftists don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong" All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt
When you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.
The naive scholar who searches for a consistent Leftist program will not find it. What there is consists only in the negation of the present.
The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could have been speaking of much that goes on today when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
I despair of the ADL. Jews have enough problems already and yet in the ADL one has a prominent Jewish organization that does its best to make itself offensive to Christians. Their Leftism is more important to them than the welfare of Jewry -- which is the exact opposite of what they ostensibly stand for! Jewish cleverness seems to vanish when politics are involved. Fortunately, Christians are true to their saviour and have loving hearts. Jewish dissatisfaction with the myopia of the ADL is outlined here. Note that Foxy was too grand to reply to it.
Foxy
Email me here (Hotmail address).
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