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31 October, 2018

Father is forced to apologize after dressing his son as Hitler for a Halloween photo but only after defending his actions by saying 'we love history!'

"Goldbach" sounds like an Ashkenazi name!

A father from Kentucky has been forced to apologize after he dressed his son up as Adolf Hitler while he wore the costume of a Nazi soldier for a family photo to celebrate Halloween.

Brant Goldbach says that he regrets dressing his five-year-old son as the German demagogue for the family photo and initially attempted to justify the idea saying his son loved dressing as 'historical figures'

Goldbach posted photos of the Halloween costumes during a local trick or treat event on Thursday and condemned those who approached and threatened him and his son during the party.

'Tonight grown adults threatened a child over his costume. Threatened his mom and dad as well,' Goldbach wrote. 'Threatened to rip his outfit off of him screaming obscenities, scareing (sic) a small child.

'Anyone who knows us knows that we love history, and often dress the part of historical figures,' he wrote in a post that has since been deleted.

'Tonight as we walked we saw people dressed as murderers, devils, serial killers, blood and gore of all sorts. Nobody batted an eye. But my little (son) and I, dress as historical figures, and it merits people not only making snide remarks, but approaching us and threatening my little 5-year-old boy,' he wrote in the posting.  

Goldbach was publicly shamed as a 'child abuser,' 'racist,' and 'coward' on Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter.

Following the backlash, Goldbach who runs a jewelry store later apologized for his actions claiming he 'didnt realize the costume would 'stir so much controversy.'

SOURCE 




Australia: Trad 'mock outrage' over 'racist' comment

Political correctness rejected for once

Queensland treasurer Jackie Trad has been accused of "mock outrage" after calling on the opposition's deputy leader to resign for his "racist" comparison of her to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's former propaganda chief.

Tim Mander likened Ms Trad, who is of Lebanese background, to "Comical Ali" while slamming her economic credentials at state parliament on Tuesday.

Comical Ali was the nickname of Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, the spokesman for the Hussein regime during the 2003 Iraq War who frequently claimed Iraq was winning as coalition forces won battles.

Ms Trad said Mr Mander's comments were "deeply alarming and personally offensive".

"There are so many other references Tim Mander could have chosen to make his point but he chose a racially-based reference in relation to my background," Ms Trad said.

She called on Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington to sack Mr Mander if he didn't stand down.

Ms Frecklington cancelled a scheduled press conference and a statement was issued on behalf of Mr Mander, saying he didn't believe Ms Trad's concern was genuine.

"Labor's mock outrage today at my statement about their economic incompetence shows how out of touch Annastacia Palaszczuk's government really is," he said.

It is not the first time Ms Trad has been the target of racially based slurs from the LNP.

Member for Oodgeroo Mark Robinson called her "Jihad Jackie" on social media earlier this year.

Mermaid Waters MP Ray Stevens also called Ms Trad "Jihad Jackie" a number of times while the LNP were in office between 2012 and 2015.

SOURCE 



30 October, 2018

Truth Not Covered by Free Speech, European Court Rules

Europe’s top human rights court has ruled that comments about Mohammed having pedophilic tendencies are not covered by the right to freedom of expression, agreeing with the assessment of courts in Austria that the remarks constituted “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace.”

A seven-judge European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) panel in Strasbourg concluded that the Austrian courts had “carefully balanced the applicant’s right to freedom of expression with the rights of others to have their religious feelings protected, and to have religious peace preserved in Austrian society.”

Thursday’s decision came nine years after Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian political scientist and activist, held a seminar in Vienna where among things she criticized the treatment of women in Islam. The topic of Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha, the youngest of his dozen wives and concubines, came up.

According to Islamic texts, the 7th century Arabian who founded Islam was betrothed to Aisha when she was six, and the marriage was consummated when she was nine.

The court record quotes Sabaditsch-Wolff as having said that Mohammed “liked to do it with children,” (other translations of the German comment render it “had a thing for little girls”) and saying, “A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not pedophilia?”

In 2011, Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted under Austria’s penal code for “denigrating the teachings of a legally recognized religion” and fined 480 euros (about $546), plus costs. She was acquitted on a charge of incitement.

Sabaditsch-Wolff appealed the decision, but a higher court in Austria upheld it.

In June 2012 the case was lodged with the ECHR, which hears allegations of breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. Sabaditsch-Wolff complained her freedom of expression rights under the convention had been violated.

She said the Austrian courts had failed to address the substance of the statements in question, in the light of her right to freedom of expression.

If they had done so, Sabaditsch-Wolff argued, they would have qualified that as value judgments based on facts, rather than as mere value judgments.

The ECHR judges disagreed.

They said although people must tolerate the denial by others of their religious beliefs, in cases where comments are “likely to incite religious intolerance” a state might legitimately consider them to be “incompatible with respect for the freedom of thought, conscience and religion and take proportionate restrictive measures.”

SOURCE  





NPR Issues Absurd Warning Against Using ‘Racist’ Halloween Decorations

The left is on a warpath to be offended by everything — including spooky skeleton Halloween decorations.

The left-wing NPR published an article with a warning in their headline: “This Halloween: Be Careful How You ‘Hang’ Your Decorations.”

This time they are targeting hanging skeletons, if you couldn’t tell by their wordplay in the headline.

I’m not a horror fan or expert by any means, but it seems to be a common horror trope for skeletons to be hanging by a rope.

It’s one of the most generic and widely used Halloween decorations possible, just after jack-o’-lanterns and spiders — but apparently it’s now racist.

The author, Mayowa Aina, recalled growing up and seeing a lot of decorations but never realized how “racist” they are.

She probably never realized they were “racist” because they aren’t. The people who put up the decorations didn’t have racist intentions and the people viewing the decorations don’t perceive them as racist.

SOURCE 





29 October, 2018

Censorship reaction to the recent shooting

There is only one guilty person but many are punished

The suspected gunman who opened fire on a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday morning, killing at least 11 people and injuring several others, has been named as 46-year-old Robert Bowers, a Trump-hating antisemite who regularly complained on social media about the president and 'the infestation of Jews.'

Little is known about him but he made no attempt to conceal his antisemitism on the social media website Gab, beloved by users because it promises never to censor them or hinder their free speech.

In response to the shooting, the online payment giant PayPal announced that it has banned Gab, according to The Verge.

Gab responded by releasing a statement on Medium condemning the shooting while denying that it encourages terrorism or violence.

'Gab.com’s policy on terrorism and violence have always been very clear: we a have zero tolerance for it,' the company said.

'Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence.'

Apple refuses to host Gab in its iOS store while Google banned the app from its Google Play store for violating the company's hate speech policy.

A post made on the site's Twitter account on Saturday appeared to revel in the attention prompted by the killings, saying 'We have been getting 1 million hits an hour all day.'

Bowers had an active gun license and has bought six firearms since 1996.

SOURCE 





The Simpsons axes Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu after a backlash over the Indian character's racial stereotyping

People with foreign accents are a reality.  Why not "include" them?  Including everybody in everything is a Leftist mania

The Simpsons is set to axe Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu after a backlash over the Indian character's racial stereotyping. He's one of the shows most well-known characters but a documentary last year entitled The Problem with Apu sparked a fierce debate over his inclusion.

The film, made by comedian and film maker Hari Kondabolu, focused on how the Simpons might be stereotyping the South Asian community with the character.

And now it has been reported that Apu Nahasapeemapetilon might be removed from the long-running animated series entirely.

In an interview with IndieWire, producer Adi Shankar revealed that he's verified from 'multiple sources' the removal of Apu from the show. He said: 'They’re going to drop the Apu character altogether.

'They aren’t going to make a big deal out of it, or anything like that, but they’ll drop him altogether just to avoid the controversy.'

The news comes despite Shankar wanting to crowdfund a script that could have saved the character - by addressing the issues raised in The Problem with Apu and updating the character for a modern audience.

He believes axing the character entirely would be a big mistake and could be seen as avoiding the controversy entirely. He said: 'If you are a show about cultural commentary and you are too afraid to comment on the culture, especially when it’s a component of the culture you had a hand in creating, then you are a show about cowardice.

'It’s not a step forward, or step backwards, it’s just a massive step sideways. After having read all these wonderful scripts, I feel like sidestepping this issue doesn’t solve it when the whole purpose of art, I would argue, is to bring us together.' 

One of the main 'problems' with Apu is that the character is voiced by Hank Azaria, a white actor, who admitted his portrayal of Apu is actually a homage to white British actor Peter Sellers playing an Indian in the 1968 comedy The Party.

SOURCE 






28 October, 2018

Megyn Kelly Is Out At NBC Following ‘Blackface’ Gaffe

Multiple sources have confirmed to DailyMail.com that Megyn Kelly is out at NBC.  This move comes just 48 hours after the embattled host made remarks in which she defended blackface on Today.

The Daily Mail reports,

Kelly tried to deal with the scandal by delivering a tearful apology on-air and welcoming two black panelists to discuss the fraught and horrifying history of the practice, but it did no good.

‘Megyn Kelly is done. She is not ever coming back,’ said an NBC executive with knowledge of the situation.

‘We are just working out timing of the announcement but mark my word – she is gone and will never be seen on NBC live again.’

The source then added: ‘Here’s the worst part – her deal is a non-break deal – so she walks away with all that money. It’s disgusting and heads should roll here because of it.’

A spokesperson for NBC declined to comment at this time.

And it looks like Kelly could be heading for a homecoming of sorts.

A network news insider tells DailyMail.com that there are tentative conversations underway about Kelly returning to Fox News, whose viewers despise what they perceive as ‘political correctness’ and would likely welcome her back with open arms.

SOURCE 





Leftist groups call for tech companies to crack down on what they call hate speech

Note that what they call hate speech are descriptions the Left commonly use for things that Trump says.  Trump, for instance, has a long record showing that he is in no way racist yet the Leftmedia commonly mislabel things he says or does as racist.  Just the mention of race can be racist to a Leftist.

The Leftist groups below would, via their usual hysterical mislabelling, silence all conservative speech if they got their way.  When you read the things they want banned you can see some point in it, but the Devil is in the details.  What they mean by those labels is widely at variance with common usage.  It's part of the deliberate deception which is the "modus operandi" of the Left

A group of civil rights organizations is pushing technology companies to create policies to more effectively address hate speech and extremist groups.

The six organizations, joined by 40 other organizations who echoed the call, wrote in a report that they want the platforms to take firmer stances against “racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, homophobia and transphobia” and enforce policies against hate speech and extremist groups more strictly.

The groups, which include the Center for American Progress, Color of Change, Free Press, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that they plan to release report cards next year for how social media firms are handling the recommendations.

SOURCE 





26 October, 2018

Incorrect hair



Vogue has been accused of cultural appropriation after styling Kendall Jenner, the American model, with big hair in a photoshoot inspired by the late 19th century.

One social media user wrote: “We used to have our hair burned . . . now they copy our afros but can’t use actual BLACK models.”

Vogue apologised but said that the look was, in fact, meant to be an update of sketches of the “Gibson girl”, an embodiment of the Edwardian feminine ideal, which showed young women with hair piled up in bouffants.

SOURCE 





Must not appeal to history

NBC host Megyn Kelly raised more than a few eyebrows during her Tuesday morning show, when she suggested that wearing blackface on Halloween used to be an acceptable practice.

Kelly joined other panelists to discuss what constitutes a politically correct Halloween costume before she stepped into a heaping pile of controversy.

“I just feel like it’s so absurd, how — who comes up with these rules?” she asked.

The panel then discussed certain offensive costumes that would be frowned upon – examples included dressing up like Harvey Weinstein, or a couple going as the letters ‘F’ and ‘U.’

That’s when Kelly shifted gears and explained that dressing up in blackface used to be okay, even citing examples of why it’s okay to do so.

Decades ago, Kelly argued, going out on Halloween in a blackface costume was acceptable.

“That was okay, as long as you were dressing like a character,” she claimed.

“You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person that puts on whiteface for Halloween,” she admitted, prior to citing a specific example in which she felt it should be acceptable.

It wasn’t long before the backlash was in full swing and Kelly was forced to issue an apology.

SOURCE 





25 October, 2018

Switzerland Votes to Criminalize Homophobia and 'Hate Speech'

Switzerland has voted to make it illegal to be homophobic or discriminate against anyone in the LGBTQ community.

The National Council, which is the lower house in Switzerland's legislature, voted 118 - 60 in favor of a law that says anyone guilty of homophobia will face heavy fines or up to three years in prison.

"I tabled the motion after speaking to friends of mine who have personally been victims of verbal and physical homophobic violence," Mathias Reynard, a member of the Swiss Socialist Party told ShortList.

Reynard spearheaded the new law and called it a "great success for human rights."

The law criminalizes "physical violence" and "verbal violence" against LGBT people. Reynard never makes clear what "verbal violence" actually means, but says it's a crime punishable by law.

"Homophobia is not an opinion. It's a crime. One in five homosexuals attempted suicide, half before the age of 20. This victory sends a strong signal. I have already received hundreds of reactions," he said after the vote.

"And working on this law I found out that the Swiss case-law doesn't punish either hate speech or incitement to hatred towards LGBT+ people. During the last few years, this loophole in the law has been pointed out several times at an international level," he told ShortList. "To me, it is a matter of human rights and of living well together.

SOURCE 




Big Tech Is Meddling with Free Speech… and Elections

Unfortunately, Big Tech monsters like Google and Facebook have become nothing less than incubators for far-left liberal ideologies and are doing everything they can to eradicate conservative ideas and their proponents from the internet.

Without any sort of public mandate beyond its own ideological predisposition, the Big Tech leviathan is silencing the silent majority. A leaked internal Google brief with the Orwellian title “The Good Censor” proves this point by laying out the search giant’s plan for controlling the internet.

Google begins the report by echoing the liberal contention that free speech is a “social, economic, and political weapon,” calling it a “utopian” idea that’s no longer practical because internet users are “behaving badly.”

The report portrays President Trump as one of those free speech offenders and labels him as a conspiracy theorist for pointing out — correctly — that Google manipulated search results to favor Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The company also argues that tech companies should distance themselves from the “American tradition” that “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility,” and in its place adopt the suppressive “European tradition” that “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom” to create “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility.”

Google wants to “police [the] tone” and provide so-called “positive guidelines” (read: don’t go against our views, or else) to create online safe spaces.

Not wanting to be outdone, Google’s sometime-rival, Facebook, just banned dozens of prominent conservative blogs and pro-Trump pages, including one with more than three million followers, less than a month before the midterm elections.

Facebook justified this purge of conservative voices by slapping them with another Orwellian label: “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” It’s unclear whether Facebook would apply that descriptor to its tech cousin Google for recently listing the ideology of the California Republican Party as “nazism.”

What is clear is that Facebook’s election-eve purge has been long in the making. Last year, reporters revealed that radical liberal activist groups have been working with Facebook to crush “propaganda and fake news,” which actually means deleting conservative accounts.

Even Facebook’s removal of 559 pages and 251 accounts wasn’t enough to satisfy its accomplices, who responded by demanding that the social media giant silence what it calls “far-right disinformation pages.” They are especially concerned about right-leaning “meme pages,” which they want purged from the online community simply because they are much more effective than the left-leaning equivalent.

Of course, the Palo Alto Mafia’s obsession with “authenticity,” “civility,” and emotional “safety” that I have called out doesn’t apply to liberal-leaning speech.

Last year, Google fired conservative engineer James Damore for challenging the company’s liberal echo chamber. Former colleagues harassed him, with one branding him a “misogynist” and a “terrible human being” before threatening that “I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. F*ck you.”

Google’s HR department decided that Damore was the greater liability than his liberal tormentors.

Facebook had a similar in-house drama this year. In August, more than 100 conservative Facebook employees expressed their concerns to executives about the company’s left-wing “monoculture” and bias against conservatives. On Friday, that movement’s leader, engineer Brian Amerige, quit the company in protest against Facebook’s latest purge of conservative accounts.

The internet was once a safe haven for political dissenters. Social media platforms and Google’s predominance as a search engine enabled a digital public square where Americans could go to express their grievances, especially in more recent years. It’s where the silent majority had a voice.

But during the 2016 election, the forgotten men and women of America who turned to social media because they were sick and tired of the establishment swamp in Washington were inundated with pro-Clinton puff pieces when they were just searching for basic facts.

The real and underreported collusion scandal is actually Big Tech’s behind-the-scenes campaign to help Democrats win elections. Though that may not even be the most disturbing thing lurking beneath Silicon Valley’s glass and steel glitz and laid-back, all-organic cafeteria vibe.

Astonishingly, it was recently revealed that Google has also locked arms with China, an ideological soulmate of sorts, to create a censored search engine in the large Communist-controlled nation. Vice President Pence was right when he called on Google to stop aiding a tyrannical government that has killed and tortured dissidents with electric shock, rape, and brutal attacks.

Facebook, long-reluctant to deliver its service to China for fear of getting caught up in censorship and repression, now appears to be strongly considering joining Google in serving that market, too. No great surprise there.

Americans will no longer have a meaningful right to free speech if corporations — especially ones that cozy up to repressive regimes like China’s — are allowed to dictate what is and is not acceptable speech and expression on the internet.

This is an existential threat to our individual liberties as well as our system of government. Google and Facebook have shown that they will not hesitate to use their control over online content to suppress conservative thought and expression. Now, as we approach the midterm elections, they are clearly ramping up their purge of conservatives that first manifest in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Don’t listen to conservatives about this threat — read Google’s report and see the actions of Google and Facebook to recognize that when the freedoms of speech and expression are suppressed, impacting the digital public square as well as the outcome of elections, our civil society is at risk.

SOURCE 



24 October, 2018

Facebook Deletes Farrakhan ‘Hate Speech’ Video; Twitter Keeps It Up

Facebook took down a video posted to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s account that compared Jews to termites, calling it “Tier 1 hate speech,” The Wrap reported.

“The video was taken down because it violates our hate speech policies,” a Facebook representative told The Wrap.

In response to critics calling him an anti-Semite, Farrakhan, a leader of the Nation of Islam, said he is “anti-termite.”

“So when they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, call me anti-Semite. Stop it. I’m anti-termite,” he said in the video, which was taken at a major NOI convention in Detroit over the weekend.

Facebook identifies a Tier 1 violation as “violent” and “dehumanizing speech,” as well as an attack comparing a person or group of people to “animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior,” according to TheWrap.

Meanwhile, Twitter has not removed the video. The social media service un-verified Farrakhan in June after he posted a video clip titled “Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan.” That video is still available on Twitter as well.

SOURCE 






The Origins of ‘Hate Speech’

The concept of hate speech conflicts with many standards of justice

Intolerance and illiberalism, nakedly defined as abstractions or principles, are seldom if ever outwardly embraced by progressives.

None but the most extreme will argue that intolerance and censorship are good things in themselves. Normally the preferred course is more subtle.

Instead of openly arresting people who say the wrong things, the new purveyors of intolerance try to sublimate their prohibitions on speech, expression, and thought into more popularly accepted channels. Something must be done to make these prohibitions more palatable, because there is still a great deal of respect in America for freedom of thought, speech, and expression.

How to do that? The answer is quite simple: Change the subject. Shift the gaze away from the sanctity of speech to something more wholesome—to the feelings of minorities, for example, or to the supposed desire to live in more diverse communities.

One of the most popular strategies is to carve out a special category of speech that, in theory at least, leaves the rest of free speech alone. If this can be done, speech can be regulated and criminalized without involving a direct assault on the First Amendment.

A prime example of parsing good speech from bad is the notorious notion of “hate speech,” which involves designating certain kinds of remarks, gestures, expressions, and writings as intentionally hateful and thus worthy of regulation and even criminalization.

Attempts to prohibit hate speech and hate crimes have been around for years in the United States. Appropriate efforts to condemn symbolic acts of violence such as cross burnings by the Ku Klux Klan have expanded over the years to include all sorts of alleged speech and thought crimes.

Today a public statement against illegal immigration or same-sex marriage can be labeled hate speech. The Southern Poverty Law Center routinely includes pro-family groups in its list of “hate” groups based solely on their opposition to same-sex marriage.

By and large America’s upper courts have not looked favorably on campaigns to criminalize speech. When such cases have come before the Supreme Court, it has ruled in favor of free speech.

Nevertheless, proponents of hate speech restrictions are not giving up. The movement has grown in recent years, particularly as the values and ideologies of identity politics became acceptable to more Americans.

Legal Restrictions on Speech

There are two types of threatening or defamatory speech that can potentially be restricted by the law. One is any speech, gesture, or conduct that is intended to incite, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action such as violence.

The second includes certain classes of speech, such as obscenity and libelous words, which can be limited. They were not considered to rise to the level of First Amendment protected speech.

Oliver Wendell Holmes added a twist to the theme of prohibited speech in 1919 when he argued in Schenck v. United States that “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater” was prohibited. The circumstances for restricting speech were expanded somewhat, but the main purpose of preventing physical harm was retained.

Every attempt to curb free speech in America has run up against the First Amendment, which provides clearly that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press … .”

Yet the First Amendment is not the only obstacle. There is also the tendency in American jurisprudence to observe what is called the “strict scrutiny” test of the law. The least restrictive means available should be used to pursue a certain end. In addition, laws should be narrowly tailored to deal with conduct that pertains to a relevant end.

When it comes to connecting intentions and actions, the law should focus on what can clearly be discerned. It must also be very careful not to allow extraneous factors to cloud judgment about whether a crime was committed.

The Rise of ‘Hate Speech’ Rules

Criminal intent has always mattered in determining if a crime was premeditated. All this started to change with the rise of radical multiculturalism. Under its influence the ideas of hate speech and hate crimes were invented. Instead of worrying about the violent intent of individuals, hate speech advocates wanted to ban utterances, gestures, conduct, or writing that they deemed prejudicial against a protected individual or group.

They were most successful on college campuses, spawning a rash of new speech codes and other imaginative methods to control what people say and think. In the name of diversity certain classes of people—racial minorities, women, and homosexuals—were considered to need protection from offensive language.

The shift was not to some heightened awareness of persecution so much as a new focus on generalizing the causes of the persecution. Hate speech no longer focused on the acts of individuals but on whole classes of people who were supposedly to blame, regardless of what individuals in each class might say or believe.

Despite their success on campus, advocates for hate speech restrictions have been rebuffed repeatedly by the courts. One well-known case is the high court’s 1977 decision ruling that the City of Skokie, Illinois, violated the First Amendment when it passed a series of ordinances designed to prevent demonstrations by American Nazis without affording strict procedural safeguards.

Another case involved a St. Paul, Minnesota, teenager’s burning of a makeshift cross on an African-American neighbor’s lawn in 1990. He was convicted of violating St. Paul’s Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance, but his conviction was overturned in a 1992 unanimous decision by the Supreme Court on free speech grounds.

As the courts closed the doors on hate speech laws, advocates sought other windows of opportunity.

The most successful has been to try to control speech through administrative regulation, such as enlisting the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the content of speech on radio, TV, and other broadcast media.

The first attempt was the so-called Fairness Doctrine of 1949, whereby political content on the airways would supposedly be balanced by regulation. The Fairness Doctrine has been overturned, but in 1992 Congress directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to examine the role of telecommunications in disseminating hate speech as an incitement to hatred and violence. In 1993 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a report titled “The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crime,” in which it argued that a “climate” of hate can be seen as an inducement to violence.

These attempts to regulate free speech directly have been no more successful than attempts to curtail speech through the courts. But that does not mean the hate speech movement has been a failure. Its most significant impact has been on public and political opinion—on expanding the acceptable boundaries for defining what free speech actually is.

By the time of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the ground had already been prepared to bring hate speech norms and concepts into popular political discourse. It was then that President Bill Clinton tried to place blame for the Oklahoma attack on the “loud and angry voices of hate,” by which he was widely interpreted to mean conservatives and Republicans.

Under this new standard, people who had nothing to do with a crime could be held accountable for it, at least indirectly and politically. It was a subtle but important step toward blurring the lines between actions and speech, and between individual culpability and the social “climate” in which crimes are thought to take place.

Since the 1990s, under the influence of the radical multicultural movement, the definitions of hate speech have become far more elastic. In 2009, the National Hispanic Media Coalition outlined its definition in a report. It specified four areas as hate speech: false facts, flawed argumentation, divisive language, and dehumanizing metaphors.

Hate speech was no longer about the explicit words of individuals meant to incite violence, but a general atmosphere of public opinion that could be construed to encourage violence against certain kinds of people.

Seeing Speech as Harm

There are very serious problems with the concept of hate speech. For one thing, it fails to distinguish between legitimate political content, which is protected by the Constitution, and explicit intentions to commit violence, which are not.

Under the new rules, what may clearly be an expression of political opinion could be interpreted as offensive to anyone anywhere, and therefore arbitrarily deemed hateful. No direct threats of harm are even necessary. Certain ideas and opinions are now defined by their political content to be the moral equivalent of a threat to do violence and physical harm.

The motive of hatred is inferred not from actual words threatening violence but from, for example, what the National Hispanic Media Coalition deems “false facts, flawed argumentation, and divisive language.” No distinction is made between threatening someone with real violence and merely disagreeing with the facts and arguments. Nor is allowance made for the possibility that a disagreement over facts and logic may have nothing whatsoever to do with feelings of hatred.

Hating someone and criticizing their arguments or positions are not the same thing. A Christian, for example, may object to gay marriage on religious grounds, but that does not mean he hates any individual gay person any more than a gay person’s objection to the traditional definition of marriage means he hates straight people.

To assume that all disagreements are grounded in irrational fears is itself irrational. If it were otherwise, we might as well abolish not only our universities but our system of law: Both rely on the assumption that people are moral beings with the freedom to make choices. Without that assumption, people honestly could not be held accountable for anything.

If it were all about presumed ill motives, especially those mandated by vague social forces, we might as well not bother to learn the facts about anything. Our pursuit of knowledge and justice fundamentally depends on open and honest debate, and to sacrifice that standard is not only to return to pre-liberal standards of controlling knowledge but to slide over into authoritarian methods of thought control.

Losing Objectivity

Another serious flaw is that hate speech laws completely ignore a fundamental principle of American jurisprudence—namely, that a person convicted of a crime must have actual criminal intent.

It is ludicrous to argue that saying offensive words alone or simply disagreeing with someone in an argument shows criminal intent. Even in cases where maliciousness was clearly involved, such as the St. Paul case, the Supreme Court has ruled that freedom of speech trumps offensive speech when no physical harm is intended.

It also has ruled that criminal intent is required even in cases where violent language is aimed at a specific person. It is not enough, the high court ruled in the 2015 Facebook case of Anthony Elonis, to show that a “reasonable” person could detect a threat from someone’s postings. The mental state of the person making a threat must be considered to determine whether the real intent to commit violence existed.

Proponents of hate speech restrictions such as New York University Professor Jeremy Waldron believe that criminal intent to commit violence is irrelevant. All that is required for speech to be categorized as hate speech is that a person’s or group’s “dignity” is under threat.

Put aside the huge difference between offending someone and meaning them physical harm. The bigger problem is that it is left almost entirely to the accuser to determine and apply the standards for defining dignity and therefore establish what is offensive and what is not.

The rational give-and-take that one assumes should be part of such determinations—and which necessarily presumes some social consensus on how the speech affects the public good—is short-circuited by giving one side a decided advantage.

The problem is compounded by the fact that there can be legitimate disagreements over the political content of speech. Nor can the determination of hate speech be justified solely on the basis of whether doing so engenders “social peace,” as Waldron argues.

If this were an unassailable public good in and of itself, we could find any number of authoritarian ways to try to enforce it. But we would be considerably less free and democratic as a result.

Authoritarian rulers ban free speech to maintain public order, but even if this extreme case is not what Waldron and other defenders of hate speech have in mind, we must ask where to draw the line.

Should the people at the Council on American-Islamic Relations get to decide that any criticism of Sharia law is ipso facto “Islamophobia” and therefore make it legally prohibited?

Where is the threat to public order here? Surely it is not from people who object to the religious coercion demanded by Sharia law, but rather from those who use coercion (1) to maintain religious discipline among the faithful and (2) to muzzle those outside the faith who may have religious views of their own.

If peace is about justice, there is precious little justice in that.

Not since George Orwell’s “thoughtcrimes”—the author’s word for unapproved thoughts in his novel “1984”—has there been so little regard for the dangers of controlling free speech.

Not only has the bar been lowered from threatening physical violence to merely giving offense, it is now up to those who allege an offense to decide whether the offense was intended.

The presumption of guilt is built ideologically into the structure of the political narrative underlying the accusations: Only racial minorities can know what it is like to be discriminated against, so only they can know what hate speech is. Only Muslims get to decide what “Islamophobia” is and what it is not.

What is really in the heart of the accused is immaterial, because both meaning and intent are prejudged by a set of proscribed ideological positions and, in some cases, even by the race of the accused.

The Death of Freedom

Whatever this may be, it is not liberal. Liberalism of all kinds, including the more progressive variety adopted by the ACLU in the 20th century, always made freedom of expression and speech a constitutionally protected principle.

Not anymore. Today free speech is in progressive liberal circles clearly subordinated to other concerns. Lost are not only a sense of balance and proportion but the principle of mediation.

Liberalism has survived all these years because it was flexible. It accepted implicitly the idea that people had different interests as individuals, and that the only way to reconcile those differences was to assume the good faith of everyone equally as individuals.

Hate speech theory does not do that. It assumes bad faith on the part of people regardless of their stated intentions, essentially calling them liars if they defend themselves against the current orthodoxy.

Above all, hate speech theory obliterates the ethical responsibility of the individual. Liberal philosopher and lawyer Ronald Dworkin was quite right that, as obnoxious as some hateful speech can be, it is necessary to allow it for no other reason than that trying to ban it will undermine the moral case against discrimination.

Ultimately people—individual people—have to make their own moral judgments about how to treat each other with respect and dignity. Having this issue forced on them by law and coercion not only takes away the right of individuals to make that call on their own, it also undermines the moral authority of making the right decision.

As John Locke argued in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), coercion in matters of conscience can undercut the moral legitimacy of the oppressor’s cause. One must be free to decide; otherwise the decision is not ethical at all but simply a matter of submission as a way to avoid punishment.

Am I exaggerating the threat to free speech? Most Americans still cherish free speech. They will not give it up lightly. But the trends are not good.

Look at what is happening in other countries. Most European countries and Canada have had very strict hate speech laws for quite some time. Most of them are far more intrusive in criminalizing the content of speech and expression than we are used to in the United States.

For example, in Sweden a pastor arrested in 2003 was sentenced to one month in prison for delivering a sermon in church critical of homosexuality. The conviction was eventually overturned on free speech grounds, but what opened the door for the prosecution in the first place was a 2002 law that explicitly listed criticism of sexual orientation in church sermons as a criminal act.

The abuse happened because the law was written with little or no regard for religious liberty, which may not be surprising in a highly secular country like Sweden, but which should be a scandal in the United States.

One of the unique attributes of being American has been a passionate devotion to free speech. It is one characteristic that sets us apart from other Western countries, where the tradition is far less cherished.

As lines get blurred and free speech is cheapened as a mere social fiction by clever intellectuals, we could find ourselves losing one of the most precious birthrights of our historical fight for freedom—the liberty to believe and say what we please about the nature of our government, our politics, and our society.

SOURCE 





23 October, 2018

VICTORY: Twitter restores LifeSite account after thousands protest online

On Friday, Twitter Support notified LifeSiteNews that it has reversed the lock.

“We have restored your account, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” the message read. “Twitter takes reports of violations of the Twitter Rules very seriously. After reviewing your account, it looks like we made an error.”

“It’s good to see that Twitter corrected its error in this instance, but the corporation needs to undertake major reform to prevent such ridiculous bans from occurring in the first place,” Steve Jalsevac said in response to the latest development. “They have been occurring far too frequently, revealing severe liberal bias by a significant number of Twitter staff assigned to monitor and make judgments on tweets.”

Twitter has similarly restricted scores of conservative content on similar grounds, often reversing it after public backlash with similar comments about unexplained “errors.”

“We should not have had to appeal what was clearly a totally wrong decision by whoever initiated the lock on our account,” Jalsevac argued.

SOURCE 





Canadian Group Calls Out Facebook, Twitter for Censorship, Labeling Pro-Life Posts as 'Hate Speech'

A pro-life group in Canada that earlier this year had a YouTube video go viral has accused Facebook and Twitter of censoring recent posts on their social media accounts.

Choice42, an Ajax, Ontario-based organization, told the pro-life news website Life News in an interview published Wednesday that they recently had a video censored by Facebook.

"Many of our pro-life posts have been taken down lately and yesterday Facebook actually sent me a message saying it was because my post was 'hate speech,'" explained Choice42 Director Laura Klassen.

"Our CHOICE42 video, 'Louise's Story' was blocked by Facebook when we originally uploaded it because it 'violated Facebook community standards.' It's the personal story of a young woman who was raped and became pregnant and decided to choose life. There is nothing graphic or disturbing in the video."

Klassen also told Life News that Choice42 has experienced similar problems with Twitter, drawing parallels to complaints made by the U.S.-based pro-life group Live Action.

"Twitter has done to us what they've done to Live Action, making our entire account ineligible for promotion unless we delete all of our 'anti-abortion tweets,'" continued Klassen.

"Live Action has been quite successful about making it known that they are being censored. I find it interesting that Facebook/Twitter cares enough about our little Canadian org to do the same to us."

SOURCE 






22 October, 2018

Facebook and Twitter now deleting Leftist sites too

Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke its spam rules, they say it’s censorship.

Some 800 pages spanning the political spectrum, from left-leaning organizations like The Anti Media, to flag-waving opinion sites like Right Wing News and Nation in Distress, were shut down.

Other pages banned include those belonging to police brutality watchdog groups Filming Cops and Policing the Police. Even RT America’s Rachel Blevins found her own page banned for posts that were allegedly “misleading users.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter’s coordinated ‘deplatforming’ of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. “Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed,” he wrote. “That's what has happened to every censorship advocate in history.”

Facebook claims that the accounts were shut down for “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” and, disturbingly, the company said in a blog post that it is working hard to root out pages, groups and accounts “created to stir up political debate.”

In America, Conservatives were the first to complain about unfair treatment by left-leaning Silicon Valley tech giants. However, leftist sites have increasingly become targets in what Blumenthal calls “a wider war on dissident narratives in online media.” In identifying enemies in this “war,” Facebook has partnered up with the Digital Forensics Lab, an offshoot of NATO-sponsored think tank the Atlantic Council. The DFL has promised to be Facebook’s "eyes and ears" in the fight against disinformation (read: alternative viewpoints).

With the Atlantic Council funded by a plethora of private donors, state institutions, and arms manufacturers, it is little wonder that some commenters on Twitter saw the group’s fingerprints all over the latest round of bans.

SOURCE 




Supreme Court agrees to hear a case that could determine whether Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies can censor their users

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine whether users can challenge social media companies on free speech grounds.

The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, centers on whether a private operator of a public access television network is considered a state actor, which can be sued for First Amendment violations.

The case could have broader implications for social media and other media outlets. In particular, a broad ruling from the high court could open the country's largest technology companies up to First Amendment lawsuits.

That could shape the ability of companies like Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet's Google to control the content on their platforms as lawmakers clamor for more regulation and activists on the left and right spar over issues related to censorship and harassment.

The Supreme Court accepted the case on Friday. It is the first case taken by a reconstituted high court after Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation earlier this month.

On its face, the case has nothing to do with social media at all. Rather, the facts of the case concern public access television, and two producers who claim they were punished for expressing their political views. The producers, DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Melendez, say that Manhattan Neighborhood Network suspended them for expressing views that were critical of the network.

In making the argument to the justices that the case was worthy of review, attorneys for MNN said the court could use the case to resolve a lingering dispute over the power of social media companies to regulate the content on their platforms.

While the First Amendment is meant to protect citizens against government attempts to limit speech, there are certain situations in which private companies can be subject to First Amendment liability. Attorneys for MNN have made the case that social media companies are clearly not government actors. But in raising the question, they have provided the Supreme Court an opportunity to weigh in.

Courts in California and New Jersey have weighed in on the issue, finding that social media companies don't constitute state actors subject to First Amendment liability. A federal judge in New York ruled in May that the First Amendment protected users interacting with parts of Twitter, including the president's feed. But that ruling did not apply to Twitter as a whole.

SOURCE 







21 October, 2018

LifeSiteNews Blocked From Twitter, Yet, Louis Farrakhan remains . . .

The pro-life religiously conservative LifeSiteNews has been locked out of its Twitter account for an article that profiled the rise in STDs among homosexual men.

The article in question, "Why HIV, syphilis, and gonorrhea are rising among homosexuals," was written in 2014 and focused on statistics provided by the CDC and The New York Times. Four years later, on October 18, the social media giant Twitter locked LifeSiteNews from its account for "hateful conduct."

Written by Dr. Gerald M. Nadal, a molecular biologist and microbiologist who is also president and CEO of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, the article primarily argued that the rise in STDs among homosexual men was due to a spike in unprotected sex further aided by the fact that infected individuals were keeping their sexual partners in the dark about their condition.

Nadal was countering an article in Bloomberg News at the time, which argued that the sudden spike in STDs among homosexual men was due to homophobia, not sexual activity. "Gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise in the U.S., mostly in men who have sex with men (MSM), a trend the government said is linked to inadequate testing among people stymied by homophobia and limited access to health care," Bloomberg News stated.

Nadal's article remained on LifeSiteNews for four years until Twitter blocked their account on Thursday because the headline violated "our rules against hateful conduct" while promoting violence, threats, and harassment against "other people on the basis of [...] sexual orientation [...], or serious disease."

No explanation has been given as to what exactly set off the ban nor has Twitter specified the ban's duration.

Steve Jalsevac, co-founder and president of LifeSiteNews, said the ban was "total intolerance" in line with Silicon Valley's "totalitarian mindset."

LifeSiteNews has now launched a petition urging that Twitter lift the ban.

Also this week, Twitter announced it would not be banning Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan for a tweet in which he compared Jews to termites.

SOURCE 




Kristen Bell Not Happy With Message Sent By Snow White: Did The Prince Have Permission?

Kristen Bell is getting candid with her kids about Disney’s princesses in the age of #MeToo.

The 38-year-old actress and mom of Lincoln, 5, and Delta, 3, told Parents magazine that she had a serious conversation with her kids about the infamous kissing scene in “Snow White.”

Bell, who’s played a Disney princess herself as the voice of Anna in “Frozen,” also spoke to her children about Snow White’s naivete.

“Every time we close Snow White I look at my girls and ask, ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that Snow White didn’t ask the old witch why she needed to eat the apple? Or where she got that apple?’ I say, ‘I would never take food from a stranger, would you?’ And my kids are like, ‘No!’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m doing something right,’” Bell said.

She’s not the only actress who’s questioning Disney movies. Keira Knightley recently told Ellen DeGeneres that her 3-year-old daughter, Edie, is “banned” from watching “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid.”

SOURCE 






19 October, 2018

Kleenex to ditch "Mansize" tissues after gender inequality complaints

The UK's most popular tissue brand, Kleenex Mansize, has been forced to clean up its image after consumers complained its name was sexist.

After more than sixty years Kleenex is phasing out the Mansize tissues name, deciding instead to call the disposable handkerchiefs "Extra Large" tissues.

Kimberly-Clark, which owns Kleenex, said it succumbed to growing public demand to change the name, despite not itself believing that the Mansize branding suggests or endorses gender inequality. 

It comes amid a wider backlash against unnecessarily gendered products, with consumers and campaigners criticizing manufacturers of razors, pens, confectionary and other products over "outdated" gender stereotyping.

The Advertising Standards Authority, which regulates adverts, has also said it will ban those that encourage gender stereotypes, such as women cleaning up after their family, or men failing to do housework.

At present the renaming of Mansize tissues is only impacting big boxes, but compact boxes are due to be rebranded next year.

A spokesman for Kimberly-Clark said: "Kleenex Mansize tissues have been on shelves for the past 60 years. Over that time, the brand has always been characterised by a much larger tissue size, which is both soft and strong.

"It was launched at a time when large cotton handkerchiefs were still very popular and Kleenex offered a unique disposable alternative. Despite that our consumer service is registering consistent increase of complaints on gender concern related to Mansize subbrand.

"Kimberly-Clark in no way suggests that being both soft and strong is an exclusively masculine trait, nor do we believe that the Mansize branding suggests or endorses gender inequality. Our Mansize tissues remain one of our most popular products, with 3.4 million people buying these tissues every year.

SOURCE 





'Some people feel excluded': PC brigade insist the word 'guys' is sexist towards women – and suggest a ridiculous word to replace it

This is a rather odd story to come out of Australia.  Like the British we normally use "bloke" instead of "guy" -- and bloke refers only to men.  In addressing a group of people we would normally use just "people".  But TV has of course also made the American usage familiar

There have been calls for the word 'guys' to be banned from use in workplaces as it is sexist towards women. Critics of the word say it positions men as the 'default' and excludes women.

Linguist John Hajek from the University of Melbourne said the term should no longer be used, in order to stop offending women in the workplace - and suggests using 'hey all', 'everybody' or 'people'.

Diversity Council Australia chief executive Lisa Annese said some women feel excluded by the word 'guys'.

'The word ''guys'' can be used to mean both men and women - but not for everybody,' she told the ABC.

Ms Annese recommended using the word 'team' instead of 'guys' as it is more inclusive. '''Team'' is a completely inclusive term, and also it's not so formal that it sounds ridiculous,' she said.

'In the workplace, you cannot reasonably predict the impact that your words have on other people. If you're a leader and you're addressing a whole group of people, isn't it better to use a more accurate term?'

The word 'guys' was first used as a reference to Guy Fawkes but was then used to mean 'men' in the United States in the 1800s.

'In a business environment, you don't want to upset anyone (or) get a proportion of your workforce offside,' Mr Hajek said.

SOURCE 




18 October, 2018

Scalise Warns Against Democrat hate speech

He calls on fellow lawmakers to condemn the violent rhetoric being used to stoke anti-GOP rage.

In a recent Fox News op-ed, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) called out Democrat leaders over their use of uncivilized and threatening rhetoric. He specifically noted recent statements made by Hillary Clinton about how Democrats “cannot be civil” with Republicans, as well as comments from former Attorney General Eric Holder, who encouraged the audience at a campaign rally to “kick” Republicans when they “go low.”

Scalise warned that the political rhetoric coming from Democrats has only served to stoke burning anger among leftists and “incite even more harassment and violence.” He knows what he’s talking about given his own “near-death experience at the hands of a deranged shooter who sought to assassinate a baseball field of Republicans.”

After listing several recent incidents of threats and violence leveled against conservatives and the fact that these incidents are only growing, Scalise appealed to his Democrat colleagues to condemn the violent vitriolic rhetoric and to strive for civility. “A healthy, strong democracy is not possible if anyone lives in fear of expressing their views,” Scalise wrote. “In America, we win battles at the ballot box, not through mob rule or intimidation. While it’s clear many Democrats refuse to accept the election of President Trump, if they want change, they need to convince people with their ideas and actually win elections, rather than call for violent resistance, harassment, and mob rule.”

SOURCE 







Wendy's customer left outraged after he received a receipt with 'Chubby' written on it instead of his name

I am inclined to think that people who have peculiarities should learn to live with it. If not, "shaming" could lead to corrective action -- such as weight loss

A North Carolina man was shocked when he went to his local Wendy’s to order a sandwich for his fiancée and himself and found his receipt said 'Chubby' in place of his name.

Jimmy Shue, of Gaston County, tried to keep the insult on his ticket to himself, but when his order was announced and his 'name' was called out the entire restaurant erupted in laughter.

He says the 'Chubby' insult came out of the blue when he stopped at the Gastonia restaurant around 8pm on October 4.

'The girl asked me my name at the register, so I gave her my name clear as day, "Jimmy". She said, "Okay, thank you," handed me the ticket, and I didn’t pay no mind at first until looked down at it while I was waiting and saw it said "Chubby,"' he said to WFMY. 

At first he was upset but didn't want to raise hell about the ticket.

Then when another employee called out his order, the patrons at the restaurant exploded with laughter, leaving Jimmy utterly humiliated.

'He was hesitant to even say "Chubby" but he did and I told him, "That’s not my name but that’s my order," and I grabbed the order and started to walk out because I was mad,' Shue said.

'Everybody started laughing in the restaurant, and I got really embarrassed,' he added. 

Shue flagged the incident to Wendy's corporate who put him in touch with someone at the local restaurant who simply told him the situation was 'dealt with' without any further explanation. 

Wendy's tells DailyMail.com that the situation has been addressed and the female employee who wrote 'Chubby' has been fired.

SOURCE 









17 October, 2018

Wrestler gets Hate Mail For Attending Donald Trump Rally

Earlier this week, Jerry "The King" Lawler was spotted at a Donald Trump rally. Lawler had one of the best seats in the house, as he was seen smiling and cheering on the President of the United States during his speech, with Lawler seated right behind Trump.

TMZ caught up with the WWE Hall of Famer, and Lawler explained that he wasn't at the rally to show support to Kavanaugh's nomination or to see the President, but to support a fellow WWE Hall of Famer.

"Well, it's funny", Lawler explained. "Donald Trump was right in Memphis, our hometown, and we were asked by some people to go to the rally, and I went and unbelievably received from some social media some actual hate mail, just for going to the rally of Donald Trump.

"But I want to tell everybody; I wasn't going there to see the President, I was going to see a fellow WWE Hall of Famer. That's all."

SOURCE 





The hate speech against Trump never stops

[Actor] Jack Black was being honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame when he seized the opportunity to criticise another recipient of the illustrious honour: US President Donald Trump.

Addressing the crowd during the final moment of his acceptance speech, the Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle actor said "I love you all so much".

Before walking off, Black couldn't resist adding: "Except for Donald Trump, he's a piece of s**t! Peace out, love you!”"

SOURCE 





16 October, 2018

'CENSORSHIP is to sharing opinions as LYNCHING is to justice'

Sarah Palin has slammed Instagram as biased against conservatives after the company removed a controversial image she posted which used her own son with Down Syndrome to mock liberal protesters.

Palin posted the meme to her Instagram page on Tuesday, and the company removed it on Friday for violating 'community guidelines' after intense outcry over the image.

The image showed heroic female warriors with the label 'What protestors [sic] think we see', contrasted with pictures of Palin's 10-year-old son Trig melting down with the label 'What we really see'.

In a new post on Friday, Palin shared the takedown notice from Instagram and excoriated the company and parent firm Facebook in a lengthy diatribe accusing them of censorship and political bias.

'CENSORSHIP is to sharing opinions as LYNCHING is to justice! Unbelievable. Instagram took down a post of my son Trig acting like a normal kid ~ which I am so proud he can do,' Palin wrote.

Palin continued: 'Unbelievable. And scary. Facebook continues to censor traffic flow to my website, too.

Controversy erupted after Palin posted the original meme, which appeared to be in response to intensifying protests over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  

Palin has, to her credit, fought against attacks on people with Down syndrome in the past.  

SOURCE 




Hate speech against Kanye West

When Kanye West condemned a Republican president after Hurricane Katrina smashed New Orleans, Democrats and their media biscuit eaters weren’t all that upset.

Many were overjoyed that West, the megastar from Chicago and internationally known hip-hop artist, was on their side. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” West said.

And after he said it, this is what the media did not do:

They did not call Kanye a “house negro,” or say he was mentally ill. They did not say Kanye was illiterate. They did not say he was acting like a dancing minstrel show. And they did not withdraw his “black card.”

He served their politics, and they loved him for it.

But as most of you know, Kanye met with President Donald Trump at the White House the other day. He wore a red MAGA hat and praised the president. He hugged Trump.

The reaction from Democrats and their handmaidens of the Democratic Media Complex wasn’t love. It was slobbering rage.

“For those keeping score at home,” tweeted Tom Bevan, publisher of Real Clear Politics, “in the last 24 hours folks on CNN and MSNBC have called Kanye: 1) dumb 2) mentally ill 3) a house negro 4) a token 5) a minstrel 6) a white supremacist.”

One of the attackers was African-American academic Michael Eric Dyson. “This is white supremacy by ventriloquism,” said Dyson, sputtering in rage on pro-left MSNBC. “A black mouth is moving, but white racist ideals are flowing from Kanye’s mouth.”

And CNN’s Don Lemon said: “What I saw was a minstrel show today — him in front of all these white people …”

SOURCE 




15 October, 2018

Is this what the world has come to? Australian Government group pushes to ban the term 'pregnant women' and replace it with 'pregnant people'

A progressive organisation that is calling for Australians to be more inclusive by adopting non-gender specific terms has been slammed on social media.

The Equality Institute, a Melbourne-based 'feminist' organisation, is renowned for improving gender equality but their tweet about pregnancy on Tuesday caused a huge backlash.

In the tweet, the global research and creative agency suggested people should use the term pregnant 'pregnant people' instead of 'pregnant women'.

'People of all genders can fall pregnant, because people of all genders can have the reproductive organs to do so,' the tweet stated. 'Consider all people - including trans & non-binary folk - & ensure that your language is inclusive of everyone.'

The Equality Institute has previously been commissioned by the Victorian Government to do research and analysis on domestic violence, and has partnered up with various government agencies and non-profit companies.

Despite their attempts to be more inclusive, the tweet garnered plenty of negativity on social media with many people sharing their comments online.

'Wrong. Only women, one of only two genders, can become pregnant. My reference is science. Science doesn’t care about your feelings,' one person wrote.

'That's not how it works. It sounds like it may be time your mom & dad had the "Talk" with you,' another person said.

A third person added: 'After being a labor and delivery nurse for 25 years.....I’m pretty sure my wife would disagree with your opinion.'

Another organisation seeking to incite social change that has ruffled a few feathers with one of its tweets is the Wellcome Collection, a British museum and library.

The museum recently sent out a tweet promoting an event on October 6 using the word 'womxn' which led to a Twitter backlash from hundreds of women.

In the tweet, the organisation promoted a series of activities, discussions and workshops for 'womxn' to challenge existing archives of women in history.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison commented on the two proposed changes, when he spoke to 3AW's Neil Mitchell.

When the radio host asked the PM how he felt about political correctness in relation the term 'pregnant women' and 'womxn', he replied by saying: 'Well that's ridiculous'.

'I mean honestly, seriously... people should just honestly get over themselves.

'I mean we want gender equality, we don't want people discriminated on the basis of their sexuality. And we want all of that, but we don't have to carry on,' the PM said.

SOURCE 





How Did 3-D-Printed Guns Become a Free Speech Issue?

In 2012, Defense Distributed, a nonprofit organization, began posting online free downloads of computer files — codes — that would enable users to easily produce their own firearms and firearm components with 3-D printers.

In May 2013, the State Department informed Defense Distributed that sharing these files in this particular manner violated provisions of the Arms Export Control Act.

And just like that, 3-D-printed guns became a free-speech issue wrapped up in all the societal trappings of a Second Amendment debate.

In short, the underlying dispute was one of interpretation: Were the codes for 3-D-printed guns “technical data” for purposes of the United States Munitions List, and did making them available for international download constitute “exportation” of that regulated technical data? Defense Distributed argued that the codes weren’t regulated technical data, and that even if they were, the prohibition on publishing them was an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.

At no point did anyone question the legality of manufacturing firearms for personal use, whether with a 3-D printer or through other means.

In fact, after spending multiple paragraphs discussing the process of 3-D printing firearms, the Fifth Circuit very clearly stated: “Everything discussed above is legal for United States citizens and will remain legal for United States citizens regardless of the outcome of this case.”

While the government has since reached a settlement agreement with Defense Distributed — a settlement some states have filed their own lawsuit to stop — it’s important to understand the reality of the initial lawsuit. This was, is and will continue to be a question of speech, and whether and when the government can prohibit speech about how to conduct a lawful activity.

The right to free speech protects far more than mere words. At its core is the guarantee that the government may not punish or prohibit the free dissemination of information, the expression of ideas or the use of certain modes of communication. As the U.S. Supreme Court explained in Texas v. Johnson, the First Amendment protects both literal and symbolic speech. As long as the speaker intended to convey a particular message and that message is likely to be understood by those who view it, then it is speech.

But, arguably, computer code is pure speech.

Code is simply information translated into a language for computers. Like human languages, the “languages” of code are diverse. They exist in many different families and styles, but all of them are capable of expressing the same ideas in different ways. The information is not depicted as words, nor does it necessarily exist in a physical, tangible format.

It is, rather, a sequence of symbols that form an instruction for a computer, which the computer then executes. In so many words, code is the way in which humans communicate with the computer, but this communication can also be read and understood by humans who “speak” the particular code. And in this sense, the code itself is “speech” that conveys information which can readily be interpreted by computers or humans.

On its face, it would seem that if Defense Distributed published a how-to pamphlet on 3-D printing firearms, and included in that pamphlet the literal step-by-step code sequencing for the reader to manually plug into the computer, it would be protected speech.

What, then, is the practical difference between skipping this step and allowing the downloader to directly input the code without reading it?

There isn’t one.

SOURCE 








14 October, 2018

Google Censorship Story 'Confirms Our Worst Fear'

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell responded Wednesday to news of a leaked internal report from Google suggesting that in order to prevent certain political events, tech companies would have to start censoring web content.

"This story confirms our worst fear. Contrary to Google's public statements and what they have said to us in private discussions, Google is in the censorship business and apparently the lying business as well. We're going to be meeting with our coalition partners immediately and we will announce next moves very soon."

SOURCE 






Google hate

On Saturday, Oct. 6, when it was clear that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh would be confirmed by the U.S. Senate -- where Republicans hold a 51-to-49 majority over the Democrats -- Google Design Lead Dave Hogue took to Twitter to vent his rage, railing that "you are finished, @GOP" and "F**K. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL."

In full, Hogue tweeted, "You are finished, @GOP. You polished the final nail for your own coffins. F**K. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL.  I hope the last images burned into your slimy, evil, treasonous retinas are millions of women laughing and clapping and celebrating as your souls descend into the flames."

It appears that Hogue may not be cognizant of the "advice and consent" role of the U.S. Senate in confirming federal judges, but he is well-versed in hateful and divisive speech.

Not surprisingly, after his loathsome tweet went viral, Hogue pulled it. On Sunday, Oct. 7, he tweeted, "Yes, I deleted that tweet.... Yes, I should have been more eloquent and less condemning. Yes, I still believe the @GOP is wrong and not serving your best interests."

Hogue, of course, did not apologize for his vile remarks or take his comments back. He just said he should have been more "eloquent and less condemning."

SOURCE 

Amazing that a judge who applies the law instead of making it up can arouse such hate. The man is clearly disturbed





12 October, 2018

The Leftist dependence on not calling a spade a spade

Someone awakening from a 50-year coma around the time that Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court might have mistakenly come to the conclusion — had he or she listened to the admonitory speeches of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — that efforts were being launched across the United States to legally require women to conceive, or not conceive, children.

Schumer repeatedly warned of an imminent attack on what he called the "reproductive rights" of women.

"We recently received news that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be retiring, leaving a vacancy on the nation's highest court," Schumer said on the Senate floor on June 27, the day Kennedy announced his retirement.

"This is the most important Supreme Court vacancy for this country in at least a generation," Schumer said. "Nothing less than the fate of our health care system, reproductive rights for women and countless other protections for middle-class Americans are at stake."

After President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy, Schumer returned to the floor to make the point again.

"In selecting Judge Kavanaugh," Schumer said, "President Trump did exactly what he said he would do on the campaign trail: nominate someone who will overturn women's reproductive rights and strike down health care protections for millions of Americans, including those with preexisting conditions."

"Judge Kavanaugh got the nomination not because he will be an impartial judge on behalf of all Americans," Schumer said, "but because he passed President Trump's litmus tests: repeal women's freedom for their reproductive rights and repeal America's health care, including protection for preexisting conditions."

When Kavanaugh's nomination finally came up for a vote last week, Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey echoed Schumer's rhetoric in explaining why he would vote no.

Menendez had to stop the attack on "reproductive rights."

"My daughter has grown up never knowing what it was to live in a country where women were denied reproductive rights," Menendez said. "Now I fear my granddaughter may grow up never knowing what it was like to live in a country where women had reproductive rights."

But is it plausible that Justice Kavanaugh may vote on the Supreme Court to advance some sort of legal framework that denies women the right to have as many children as they wish — or forces them to conceive children against their will?

Of course not.

Americans who have not been in a coma for the last 50 years know that when politicians like Chuck Schumer or Robert Menendez use the term "reproductive rights," they are not talking about the right to reproduce.

They are talking about a claimed "right" to kill an unborn child.

But because politicians like Schumer and Menendez apparently do not believe they can win an unambiguous debate on whether there is, in fact, a "right" to kill an unborn child, they use the term "reproductive rights" as a euphemistic substitute.

This is the classic fallacy of mistaking the question, which can always be rebutted by pointing to the real question — and forcing deniers to confront it.

SOURCE 




CNN Anchor Flips Out When Guest Uses ‘M-Word’ To Describe Protesters

In another example of the never-ending cycle of word policing from the left, CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin couldn’t take it this week when a guest on her show used the “m-word.”

The “m-word,” which apparently required self-censorship from the CNN anchor, refers to the word “mob.”

It was used by Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis, accurately describing the left-wing protesters against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the United States Senate.

“I believe it’s the overreaction of the left. When you see people like Ted Cruz getting chased out of restaurants by a mob-” Lewis said Tuesday, before he was interrupted.

Lewis was referring to the mob who yelled at Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife until they had to leave the restaurant.

There is literally nothing inaccurate about describing the confrontation by saying an angry mob chased Cruz and his wife out of a restaurant.

However, CNN’s Baldwin didn’t like the use of the “m-word” in this situation. “Oh, you’re not going to use the ‘mob’ word here,” Baldwin said, in defense of the mob.

“It’s totally a mob,” Lewis instantly replied. “It is without a doubt. There’s no other word for it.”

Since that example didn’t satisfy Baldwin, Lewis brought up another example of a left-wing mob: The group that gathered outside the Supreme Court on Saturday, literally trying to claw open the building’s massive doors.

“What about the people who were at the Supreme Court banging on the wall?” he asked.

At that, for some reason, Baldwin wanted to move the discussion along. “Let me move past the m-word,” Baldwin stammered.

I don’t blame the CNN anchor for wanting to move past the topic. Democrat leadership is responsible for enabling these disruptive mobs.

For example, Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters infamously called for crowds to form around members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet.

“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said.

She also praised mobs who run people out of restaurants and bother their families at home. “Already you have members of your cabinet who have been booed out of restaurants, who have protesters taking up at their house,” she said.

Face it, Baldwin. These left-wing “activists” are mobs — and they exist because Democrats want them to.

SOURCE 




11 October, 2018

Australia: The attacks on free speech at Sydney University

Bettina Arndt reports:

Fascinating developments regarding the action I have taken against key organisers of the Sydney University protest who tried to stop me speaking on about the fake rape crisis last month. Here’s my new video:



Please help me circulate it. And don’t forget to like it and subscribe.

This one is mainly about Maddy Ward who proudly takes ownership of the event, along with fellow activist Jessica Syed.

The two of them have quite a history. We were amazed to discover that last year the University of Sydney investigated Maddy Ward for her role in a protest against an anti-abortion group which had a stall on campus. She abused and harassed them and showed them her tits! See the photo below of Ward and Syed, taken on the day.

Work Dynamic, the firm which investigates such matters for the University, suggested Ward be given a semester’s suspension for misconduct. Ward claimed in a Buzzfeed article that the investigation was so stressful it triggered her depression and she failed a semester of her studies as a result. Yet the University failed to act prompting a NSW Labor MP Greg Donnelly to speak about the delay in parliament. (Contrary to Ward’s claims, Donnelly did not orchestrate the Christian lobby against her.)

The outcome was extraordinary. The University dropped the charges against Ward and has refused to release details of  their decision even to the anti-abortion complainants who took action against Ward. The University claimed the matter was  confidential.      

The anti-abortion incident is only one example of endless troublemaking by Ward.  Maddy Ward and Jessica Syed, another of the women I named in my complaint, were in strife earlier this year for endorsing violence against Israeli soldiers in the form of a "martyred" female suicide bomber on the front page of the student magazine.

Here’s a quote from the article:

"Women’s officers Madeline Ward and Jessica Syed, who produced the al-Tahir cover, defended their actions in an online Honi Soi article. “We were aware that Hamida al-Taher car-bombed an Israeli military encampment … (but) her actions occurred in the context of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, i.e.: a war,” they wrote. “We believe in and support the right for people to resist occupation and oppression”

It will be interesting to see whether Sydney University continues to protect these young women who are clearly responsible for so many breaches to university regulations. We now have submitted five long videos providing evidence of the key protesters in action. There’s a particularly interesting sequence in this new video showing Ward encouraging the crowd to harass an older man who was trying to make his way through the protesters to reach my talk and then resisting being removed by the riot squad.

It's been exciting to see how many prominent people have spoken out in the last few weeks about the need for universities to protect free speech on campuses, including the Education Minister, the Attorney General, a number of Senators, a Chancellor and former Vice-Chancellor. The Australian has published two editorials and numerous media commentators have weighed in, using my case to argue that universities are failing to promote proper intellectual debate and challenging ideas.

Sydney University has refused to refund the security fee – Vice Chancellor Michael Spence claimed the security guards “acted within the protocols required of them.” How is it possible that the universities security guards are not required to ensure unruly students don’t breach universities regulations. We are following up this issue. 

Yet the university has commenced their investigation into my complaint and  have asked for a list of witnesses for their lawyers to interview. They say the whole process may take months, given that the university then presents my named group of key protesters with a notice of allegation and they are then given time to respond.

It’s marvellous that my campus tour has prompted such a lively discussion about free speech on campus but I still have a long way to go to persuade universities to be braver about the fake rape crisis.

By email from Bettina [bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au]






In Austria, A Bid to Outlaw Symbols Including … The ‘V For Victory’ Sign?

In a sign of the censoriousness of our times, Austria’s interior minister wants to ban a series of symbols used by controversial groups in the Middle East and Turkey – but may find it a bit tricky when it comes to hand signals, considering they include such common and innocuous gestures as the “V for victory” sign.

A month ago Twitter was briefly diverted by a supposed covert “white power” hand signal during day one of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. What at face value appeared to be randomly splayed fingers were viewed by some as a sinister gesture.

Touching thumb and forefinger while keeping the remaining three fingers raised has long been used to indicate “good” or “okay” or “zero.” Now a deeper and more ominous meaning is being ascribed.

In Austria, Interior Minister Herbert Kickl may kick off a similar kerfuffle with his plans, according to a report on the Turkish edition of Euronews.

Austria, like Germany and several other countries in Europe, already criminalizes the straight-arm salute associated with the Nazis. Now Kickl, a member of the far-right anti-immigration Freedom Party in the ruling coalition, wants to ban symbols associated with radical groups from Islamic countries, including Turkey. (Austria, with a population of 8.7 million, is home to some 360,000 Turkish nationals or people of Turkish origin.)

Hand gestures among the targeted symbols reportedly include:

--the four-finger salute (“rabaa,” named for a mosque in Cairo) used by Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters – notably including Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faced criticism recently for using the gesture during a visit to a London mosque.

--the upward pointed forefinger sign, long used to indicate “number one,” but which ISIS and other Sunni jihadists have appropriated, apparently to symbolize monotheism.

--the hand symbol popularized by Winston Churchill during World War II as the “V for victory” sign, and later used by anti-war activists to symbolize “peace.” It is often used by members of supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a separatist armed struggle in southeastern Turkey for decades, and is viewed by Turkey and the U.S. as a terrorist organization.

--The “gray wolf” sign popularized by a Turkish ultranationalist youth group last century, in which the thumb tip touches the middle and ring fingers while the index and pinky fingers point upward.

Kickl aims to extend a “symbols law” on extremist groups, first adopted in 2014, to include symbols associated with “political Islam and other violent ideologies and contradict democratic values,” according to Austrian media reports.

The coalition government wants the plan evaluated over a four-week period, and then enter into force from next March. It proposes that violators should face a fine of up to 4,000 euros ($4,605) or one month imprisonment, with the punishment for repeat offenders increasing to up to 10,000 euros ($11,515) or six weeks’ imprisonment.

Kickl was quoted as saying the targeted symbols are “anti-constitutional and contradict our basic democratic values and therefore have no place in Austria.”

“By banning extremist symbols, we are taking an important step against the establishment of dangerous intolerant parallel and counter-societies, especially the increasing popularity of radical Islam in Vienna,” the Austria Press Agency quoted Freedom Party leader Heinz Christian Strache, who is also vice-chancellor in the coalition government, as saying earlier.

“Neither the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood nor the fascist Turkish Gray Wolves can have their place in Austria, and certainly not their deplored symbols in public, because our freedom and democracy are not self-evident, but must be defended against extremism every day,” Strache said.

SOURCE









10 October, 2018

Belgian beer named 'Maori tears' is slammed for being 'culturally offensive'

A brewery has been slammed for its 'poor taste' after labelling a beer 'Maori Tears'. Brussels Beer Project, in Belgium, is the company behind the single malt brew - with only 800 bottles available.

'From New Zealand to Brussels, we encapsulate those tears to capture their sacred nature,' the website says.

But the 'Maori Tears' beverage has upset some New Zealanders who think the name is racist.

Maori are native people of New Zealand, and labelling the beer after their tears is spiritually offensive, Maori rights advocate Karaitiana Taiuru told the New Zealand Herald.

'The term has significant cultural value to Maori people and applies to our ancestors, the living and dead and the future generations.'

'What are Maori tears? Does it symbolise that the brewer takes pride in thinking of M?ori who are crying or perhaps stereotyping that Maori are sad and drink to be happy?'

Social media users have also criticised the company for its word choice.

'It is cheap exploitation and makes not even the slightest attempt to reflect Maori culture. It is as tactless as us making a beer here and calling it Kurdish Tears,' one person said.

But some people thought it was an overreaction. 'Sounds like us kiwis are getting a bit soft if this is national news...Grow a pair NZ,' one person said.

'Belgium beer. Yum. I'd still drink it. Only tears because you can't get it here,' another said.

SOURCE 





Australia: He’s reading a financial paper; she’s reading a fashion magazine: Why women are angry about Sofitel hotel ad



A correspodent writes:  "Women are complaining that the woman in the ad is reading a fashion magazine. They somehow interpret that as the ad saying that most women read fashion magazines.

But most women who read magazines do read fashion magazines. Look at any woman's magazine pile. Even the complaining women recognise that the magazine she is reading is a fashion magazine. I doubt many man would know it is a fashion magazine. I certainly didn't. So they demonstrate that their own argument is wrong.

That is what I term an innate falsity. Like when Lefties say there is no truth, and expect that silly statement to be accepted as truth.

They are also demonstrating the collective mindedness of women, especially feminist women. They are not individually minded, which is frequently shown by the fact that they collectively feel insults and perceived insults that directed to one of them.

The white male is not like that. He is individualistic. We do not feel insults directed to another white male. Even when all white men are insulted collectively -- which they often are -- individual white males do not feel it. White males tend to be each their own individual more than women are. We can each think for ourselves.

Feminists, though, are herd minded. They all think the same. That is one reason why they cannot be equal with us men.

   
AT FIRST glance this photo looks innocent enough — a young couple relaxing in a hotel bed, both reading over breakfast in their fluffy white robes.

He’s reading a copy of the Australian Financial Review newspaper and she’s flicking through a Chanel coffee table book.

Laid out on the bed in front of them are a selection of breakfast items. There are pastries and pancakes for him, a healthy fruit platter for her.

Many female readers of Fairfax’s Good Weekend magazine spotted the ad in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on the weekend and slammed its suggestion that women only read light, frivolous material about fashion.

“Yes, newsflash for @SofitelBrisbane — some women are in fact more interested in whether stocks and shares are going up and down than whether hemlines are,” one woman wrote on Twitter.

“Ah yes, those hotel mornings when you wake up, put your hair in a nice chignon and read a coffee-table book about Chanel,” joked one woman. Replied another: “Jesus, is that a Chanel coffee table book? This is … so disheartening.”

“No no, don’t be silly, you are a woman, you only read fashion books and cookbooks,” another said.

One woman commented, “I’m surprised she’s not in skimpy underwear while he’s holding a handful of spanners”, while another said, “Funnily enough I actually prefer reading @FinancialReview in the morning.”

A spokesman for the Sofitel Brisbane apologised for the ad and said it has now been pulled from any future publications.

“There was no intention of portraying a stereotype but we recognise it and apologise for any offence that it has caused,” the spokesman said. “The creative has since been pulled from any future communications activity.”

SOURCE 





9 October, 2018

Radical British student unions under pressure to tone it down

Freedom of speech in universities is currently a major source of debate in the UK. Some parts of the media accuse students of being “snowflakes” who melt at controversy and want to shut down speech they disagree with. Other commentators portray students as being in danger of being radicalised, particularly when universities host speakers with “extremist” views on campus.

But our ongoing research is showing that fear of controversy is posing a growing risk to free, fair and open discussions on campus.

We’ve been investigating the ways in which the Charity Commission of England and Wales interacts with students’ unions in England, most of which are charities and so are subject to charity law. Since 2015, the Commission has shown a particular interest in students’ unions.

Since coming under the Charity Commission’s direct regulation in 2010, students’ unions have had to pay closer attention to their duties as charities. Students’ union officers, as charity trustees, are expected to avoid activities that risk damaging the charity’s reputation. As charities, students’ unions must be politically neutral. They can only devote resources to, and campaign on, issues which further their charitable objectives – such as advancing the education of students. According to Charity Commission guidance, which is currently under review, they could give funds to campaigns for “better street lighting near campus”, but not to campaigns supporting “industrial disputes” or “the treatment of political prisoners in a foreign country”.

Some of the chief executives of students’ unions and union officers whom we interviewed told us they struggle with a tension between their roles as democratic representatives and trustees. As elected officers, they wanted to make political statements or actions they knew were supported by the student body, but felt they couldn’t do so under their charity responsibilities. This was even more of an issue for unions with a reputation for being particularly politically active.

Most of our interviewees thought of the Charity Commission as a light-touch regulator. Some, however, were concerned about its focus on extremism on campus, particularly in relation to Islamic Societies and Muslim speakers.

Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, universities must give due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. Government guidance to universities on this “Prevent” duty expects them to assess the risk that external speakers are likely to express “extremist” views that lead to terrorism. This duty applies to university governing bodies, not to students’ unions themselves.

Through analysis of the correspondence between the commission and students’ unions, however, we’ve found that the commission is not only worried about external speakers who might fall into the government’s definition of extremism – “Vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values”. It’s also worried by external speakers who it more broadly describes as having “controversial”, though legal, views.

The commission may investigate a students’ union in response to media allegations about an external speaker’s views or past statements. We found that, regardless of whether or not the allegations can be corroborated beyond the media reports, the Commission might expect the union trustees to explain why they thought that hosting the “controversial” speaker would fulfil the union’s charitable objectives and promote the public benefit – another requirement upon charities.

The regulatory shift in language from “extreme” to “controversial” is worrying, particularly as the concept of “controversy” is even more ambiguous than that of “extremism”. Regardless of its intention, the commission’s language may encourage students’ unions with more cautious leaders to avoid speakers based only on whether they may be perceived to be controversial, or whether they have faced negative media allegations in the past – even if there is no evidence they have ever broken the law.

SOURCE 





Defamation suit threatens free speech

The Idaho Supreme Court currently has under consideration a case that will have a significant impact on your vital rights of free speech and freedom of the press.

A former Vallivue schoolteacher is suing USA Today, KTVB and a number of others over pieces of investigative journalism they produced. Those stories revealed that the teacher had lost his teaching license in Oregon after it was found that in 2005 he had engaged in sexual contact with an 18-year-old female student. He resigned his Idaho teaching position after the stories broke.

Now the teacher is suing USA Today and others who brought those facts to light.

It is undisputed in the teacher’s lawsuit that the reports were true in each and every factual claim they made. The suit is based on a controversial doctrine, never before adopted in Idaho, called “defamation by implication.” This doctrine holds that even if everything you say is true, you can still be held liable for the false inferences a listener or reader could draw from them.

The question before the Supreme Court isn’t whether the news stories actually contained a libelous implication. It’s whether the case can proceed on that basis, or whether it is necessary to prove that a statement was actually false to bring a suit. It’s a so-called “case of first impression,” meaning Idaho courts have never addressed the question of whether defamation by implication can serve as the basis for a civil suit.

Without either precedent or legislation to determine the outcome of the ruling, this is as close as courts get to acting as legislative bodies. If the justices find the case can move forward, they have created a precedent that allows future defamation cases to be brought not on the basis of false statements, but on the basis of inferences.

The chilling effect that a finding for the teacher would have on free speech and debate about matters of public concern is hard to overstate. The best defense against a libel suit is simple: “Everything I said was true.” That should be enough, and it requires the party bringing the suit to identify a false statement and present evidence showing it isn’t true in order for the lawsuit to proceed.

SOURCE 






8 October, 2018

Another Christian couple under assault: Carl and Angel Larsen

As owners of Telescope Media Group (“TMG”), a video and film production company that exists to tell great stories that honor God, the Larsens know the power of film — of great story-telling — to change hearts and minds. They want to use their wedding cinematography to reanimate the hearts and minds of people about the goodness of marriage between a man and a woman.

But the Larsens’ desire to enter the wedding cinematography field has hit a huge obstacle — a speech coercing state law. According to Minnesota officials, the State’s Human Rights Act mandates that if the Larsens make films celebrating marriage between one man and one woman, then they must make films celebrating same-sex marriages as well. State officials have repeatedly threatened to prosecute expressive business owners who decline to create speech promoting same-sex marriages. And there are steep penalties for violating the law, including payment of a civil penalty to the state, triple compensatory damages, punitive damages up to $25,000, and even up to 90 days in jail.

The Larsens can’t comply with Minnesota’s speech-compelling law. Telling stories that celebrate a same-sex marriage would violate their religious beliefs and directly contradict the very message about marriage they desire to express. But they also don’t want to be investigated, prosecuted, and possibly jailed simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. Therefore, the Larsens have not publicly offered or provided their wedding film services, but they did create a wedding teaser video so that the court could see the kind of marriage stories they want to tell.

Fortunately, Americans don’t have to wait to be punished or thrown in jail before challenging unjust laws. Instead, they can file a pre-enforcement challenge, which is exactly what the Larsens have chosen to do. They have filed a lawsuit before entering the wedding field, seeking a court order that says Minnesota cannot threaten them with severe penalties and jail time if they exercise their First Amendment right to decline to promote a message with which they disagree. Until they get a favorable ruling, the Larsens are refraining from making wedding films and muzzling their speech about God’s design for marriage to avoid the severe penalties for violating Minnesota’s law.

SOURCE 





NBC station fires a reporter for wearing a MAGA hat while covering a Trump rally in Minnesota

A reporter for an NBC affiliate station has been fired for wearing a Make America Great Again hat while on the job.

James Bunner was covering a Trump rally in the heart of Minnesota farm country Thursday while sporting the infamous, bright red MAGA hat.

While the president rallied his supporters, the multimedia journalist with KTTC was pictured behind his camera, with the station's microphone in hand and logo on his jacket all while wearing the cap.

The image circulated online and by the next day Bunner was fired because the Minnesota-based station says it does not 'allow our people to wear campaign clothing while on assignment.'

Bunner, who has worked for the station since the end of 2017, is a vocal fan of the president and has displayed his support online. He had previously uploaded a video of himself dancing in a newsroom on Trump's inauguration day to celebrate.

SOURCE 




7 October, 2018

Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam



Christine Douglass-Williams lost her job last December as a Director with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.  She is now Public Affairs and Media Consultant to the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. 

She came to Canada as an immigrant from the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago. She describes herself as "an equal mix of Scottish, Chinese, black and Indian/native Indian". So being both a female, "black" and a fluent speaker of English, she must have seemed a prize appointment to the Canadian government.

There is a video of her here

Her termination follows a review begun last summer over concerns about her writings on the website Jihad Watch, including a post where she warned that people are being duped by seemingly moderate Muslims and another calling the passage of a House of Commons motion condemning Islamophobia a “victorious day for Islamic supremacists.”

Douglass-Williams had first been appointed to the board in 2012, and was reappointed in 2015. Her term was to expire next year, but the government terminated it on Tuesday.

“Why? Because I dared to criticize political Islam,” Douglass-Williams said in an email to The Canadian Press.

“I make a distinction between those who practice Islam in peace and harmony with others, and those with an agenda to usurp democratic constitutions, demand special privileges over other creeds and who advocate the abuse of women and innocents as a supremacist entitlement.”

She called her removal a “dishonourable decision” on the part of Heritage Minister Melanie Joly, who oversees the foundation, and accused her of acting “at the behest of questionable sorts.”

Neither the Privy Council Office nor Joly’s office would comment directly on Douglass-Williams’ firing, citing privacy concerns.

However, Joly spokesman Simon Ross said in an email: “The country’s leading organization dedicated to the elimination of racism and the promotion of harmonious race relations, the Canada Race Relations Foundation, must have a board that recognizes the importance of diversity and inclusion in our society.”

The foundation was launched in 1997 as part of the settlement the federal government at the time reached with Japanese Canadians over their internment in Canada during the Second World War.

It holds workshops and roundtables across the country on combating racism, and also funds research into Canadian attitudes towards multiculturalism, immigration and other issues.

A spokesman for the board did not return a call for comment.

Appointees to the foundation’s board, like many arm’s-length organizations, serve “during pleasure,” meaning they can be removed at the discretion of the government.

The National Council of Canadian Muslims had been one of the groups that raised concerns about Douglass-Williams and they welcomed the government’s decision.

SOURCE 





Don't go to New Zealand

OUTRAGED travellers have vowed to avoid New Zealand after it became the first country to fine passengers who refuse to hand over their phone passwords at the border.

New Zealand’s Customs and Excise Act 2018, which comes into effect this week, allows customs officials to demand passwords, PINs and encryption keys to unlock devices for “digital strip searches”.

Travellers who refuse to hand over the passwords will be charged up to $NZ5000 ($A4580) and could face having their device confiscated as well as prosecution.

Previously, customs officials could stop anyone at the border and demand to see their devices but until now, the law didn’t compel travellers to provide their password as well.

“We’re not aware of any other country that has legislated for the potential of a penalty to be applied if people do not divulge their passwords,” New Zealand customs spokesman Terry Brown said.
The law compels travellers to hand over information to unlock their devices during digital searches.

The law compels travellers to hand over information to unlock their devices during digital searches.Source:istock

But customs officials won’t be able to access the Cloud, he said.  “It is a file-by-file (search) on your phone. We’re not going into ‘the Cloud’,” Mr Brown told NZTV. “We’ll examine your phone while it’s on flight mode.”

Officials must have a “reasonable cause to suspect” a device or its owner to warrant the digital search and data may be copied and reviewed.

Last year, New Zealand border officials carried out 537 preliminary searches of devices. “The shift from paper-based systems to electronic systems has meant that the majority of prohibited material and documents are now stored electronically,” a New Zealand Customs spokeswoman said.

But the rule change has been slammed by civil liberties advocates and travellers. The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties said it was a “grave invasion of personal privacy of both the person who owns the device and the people they have communicated with”.

“Modern smartphones contain a large amount of highly sensitive private information including emails, letters, medical records, personal photos, and very personal photos,” chairman Thomas Beagle said in a statement.

“The reality of this law is that it gives Customs the power to take and force the unlock of people’s smartphones without justification or appeal — and this is exactly what Customs has always wanted.”

Travellers have also taken to social media to express their outrage at the news.

SOURCE 






5 October, 2018

Amnesty says: When freedom of speech can be restricted

They long ago became a solid Leftist outfit.  Without any argument or evidence for it they say: "Governments have an obligation to prohibit hate speech and incitement". 

How do we know that? How does that "obligation" arise?  What is its source? Is it a constitutional requirement?  Far from it.  The constitution protects ALL speech. It appears that there is no  source for a prohibition on "hate speech" other than Leftist opinion. You are supposed to nod wisely and agree. 

Everybody marching in brainless lockstep with one-another was the ideal of G.W.F. Hegel -- the philosophical founder of Leftism. He has plenty of disciples today

I was once a member of Amnesty as I thought it protected dissent.  When it appeared that it protected only speech that Leftists like, I resigned.  At the moment they are big on supporting sexual outliers and condemning Burmese generals who want Muslims out of their country

The particular thing that alienated me is that they are solidly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.  They see only one side of a two sided argument -- again typically Leftist

One might have thought that the vast outpouring of hate directed at the Trump administration would have attracted some adverse comment from Amnesty but I know of none.  In fact they recently had up an article under the heading: "Renounce hate in the Trump administration". That article has now been taken down but it was a good example of Leftists projecting their own motivations onto others


You might not expect us to say this, but in certain circumstances free speech and freedom of expression can be restricted.

Governments have an obligation to prohibit hate speech and incitement. And restrictions can also be justified if they protect specific public interest or the rights and reputations of others.

Any restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of expression must be set out in laws that must in turn be clear and concise so everyone can understand them.

People imposing the restrictions (whether they are governments, employers or anyone else) must be able to demonstrate the need for them, and they must be proportionate.

SOURCE 







Fox News Contributor Fired After Calling Kavanaugh Accusers “Lying Skanks”

 

It seems that even Fox cannot handle too much truth

Kevin Jackson has been terminated as a Fox News contributor following a series of tweets in which he referred to Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers as “lying skanks” as the Kavanaugh hearing played out Thursday.

“Kevin Jackson has been terminated as a contributor. His comments on today’s hearings were reprehensible and do not reflect the values of FOX News,” said a Fox News spokesperson.

Jackson has been a contributor on Fox for several years, as well as a radio host on KJRadio and the author of the best-selling book “Race Pimping: The Multi-Trillion Dollar Business of Liberalism.”

“Feminists are their own worst enemies, and enemy of women,” Jackson wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. “TO HELL with the notion that women must be believed no matter what. Lying skanks is what these 2 women are, and we ALL know more,” he wrote.

SOURCE 





4 October, 2018

Must not misremember pompous Arab names

Hardline Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has been attacked after calling Libya ‘the People's Republic of Jam Jar or something,’ in a speech at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.
Rees-Mogg, a prominent Brexiteer made the comments to a packed crowd at a fringe meeting of the party’s annual conference. In his speech he told those assembled that he thought the term “people’s vote,” something which pro-remainers in the Brexit debate have been calling for, sounded totalitarian.

He joked: “All the countries who are least interested in their people call themselves ‘people's’, don’t they?

“So the People’s Republic of China? Oh, that’s communist. “And the People’s Republic of…jam jar, or something like that, of Libya, was what it was called when Colonel Gaddafi was in charge.”

Rees-Mogg, who is urging Theresa May to ditch her Chequers Brexit plan, was referring to Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the official name given to Libya under the late Colonel Gaddafi. ‘Jamahiriya,’ the name Rees-Mogg mocked, loosely translates as “state of the masses.”

The ex-Etonian was slammed on social media for his comments, with many accusing the Brexiteer of “casual racism”. Guardian journalist, Aditya Chakrabortty tweeted: “Ah, Global Britain: nothing to export but casual racism.” Alex Sobel, Labour and Cooperative MP, asked Rees-Mogg if he and Boris Johnson had the “same Geography teacher at Eton College?”

Lib Dem frontbencher Christine Jardine, stated Rees-Mogg was continuing in the tradition of offensive remarks which former foreign secretary Boris Johnson had been accused of committing on a regular basis.

Jardine told the Mirror: “This sort of remark is becoming too common from the Brexiteers, coming as it does in the wake of Boris’s recent burka jibes.

"Insulting other people is not the way I want my country represented and the public see it for what it is, petty politics.”

SOURCE 





NZ: Free Speech Coalition claim against Auckland Mayor

The Free Speech Coalition has amended its original statement of claim to include new actions against the Auckland City Council and Mayor Phil Goff for banning Canadian speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern from hosting event in a council owned building.

“The Free Speech Coalition’s legal team has added three new private law causes of action against the RFA and the Mayor,” says Patrick Corish, a member of the Free Speech Coalition.

The Free Speech Coalition claims that Regional Facilities Auckland has breached its contract and breached the Fair Trading Act 1986. In addition, the Free Speech Coalition claims that Mayor Goff has breached the Fair Trading Act 1986 with his misleading statements on twitter and to the press that he would personally not allow the speakers to speak at any Auckland venue. According to Court papers filed by the Council’s lawyers this is in fact not what the Mayor did, nor did he even have that power.

“While we would rather this be settled out of court, without a commitment to uphold the rights of Aucklanders to receive diverse views, even those that are controversial or offensive, Auckland Council and Mayor Goff must answer for their decisions,” says Mr Corish.

SOURCE 




3 October, 2018

Canadians trying to suppress Bible Christian

No matter how unfashionable it may be, the Bible DOES say that homosexuals should be killed. Leviticus 18:32; Leviticus 20:13

Sudbury's mayor wants another mayoral candidate who has been convicted and charged with hate crimes to be excluded from attending and participating in an upcoming debate.

Brian Bigger is seeking re-election. He's is asking other mayoral candidates to agree as a group to ban David Popescu from taking part in the Sudbury Chamber of Commerce debate.

Popescu, a perennial election candidate, was convicted of hate speech for comments made during a debate in the 2008 after he suggested homosexuals should be killed. In 2003, he was convicted of assault against his mother.

"The days of giving this man any opportunity to disparage those who speak other languages, to spew his hate and to pose as a distraction to all involved including the candidates, organizers and the media," Brian Bigger said.

"Anyone who calls for the extermination of homosexuals and runs in elections time and time again to promote hatred in the name of religion needs to be shown the door and not given a microphone."

Popescu reiterated in an interview with CBC news on Monday that he believes the Bible justifies the extermination of homosexuals.

After being convicted in 2003 and 2008, he was charged in 2015 for "advocating and promoting genocide and the wilful promotion of hatred" before those charges were withdrawn by the Crown.

Michael Macnamara, the chair of the board of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce, confirmed that Popescu will be allowed to participate in this Wednesday's debate.

"This is an all-candidates debate, and it's not for the chamber to say certain points of view cannot be expressed, certain people cannot participate. I think it's a slippery slope when you go down that road for democracy," said Macnamara, who will be moderating the event.

SOURCE 




Prominent New Zealand conservative barred from speaking at a New Zealand university

Massey University’s vice-chancellor, Jan Thomas, cancelled a booking for Don Brash to talk to students of politics at Massey University’s Manawatu campus.

Thomas cited security concerns after she said threats had been made — apparently giving in to the “thug’s veto”. In short, anyone can prevent someone speaking in public if they threaten violence against the venue, those attending, or the speakers themselves.

Unfortunately for VC Thomas, universities are subject to the Official Information Act, and blogger David Farrar was able to show through a string of emails he obtained that Thomas had wanted to find a way to stop Brash speaking at Massey well before security concerns became apparent — simply because she didn’t like his views on Maori issues.

Suppressing the antics of Wicked Campers and two lightweight Canadians are one thing; denying a platform to a former Reserve Bank governor and leader of the National opposition — who came close to being democratically elected as PM in 2005 — is entirely another.

So, once again, de-platforming has backfired on those self-appointed censors among our elites who imagine they can tell others what to read, see or hear. It has provided potent ammunition for all those who already see universities as enforcers of a leftist ideology that largely exist to tutor students in how to spot racism and sexism, and far from being the centres of rational, dispassionate inquiry that universities should be.

In fact, it is shaping up to be a blunder of monumental proportions. Already, wags are asking the university to publish a list of what views it deems acceptable and those considered to be heretical or blasphemous. It’s pretty obvious the latter would be a very long one.

The bigger problem, of course, for those intent on shutting down debate is the disaffection it will cause among the many people who don’t like being told what to think or say — including those who are generally sympathetic to liberal views on race and gender.

The left should worry that the backlash over its efforts to crimp free speech will harm the prospects of left-leaning political parties in New Zealand — principally Labour and the Greens — as, indeed, some reckon has happened in the US with the election of Trump, and in the UK with Brexit.

SOURCE 




2 October, 2018

Australia: Muslim critic Fraser Anning's public Facebook page removed for reported hate speech...

The Facebook page of One Nation-turned-Katter's Australia Party senator Fraser Anning has been removed, after apparently breaching the platform's community standards.

Fraser Anning tweeted a screenshot showing his Facebook page had been "unpublished", and called it an attack on free speech

Supporters have shared their outrage at the page's removal, arguing Facebook picks on conservative commentators

The page and all its posts appeared to have been removed after one of Senator Anning's posts was reported for hate speech.

The comments in question, which were reported anonymously, were in reference to a speech he made in Parliament on the national Safe Schools program.

One person who reported the posts told the ABC they were similar to tweets the Senator has made where he calls Safe Schools a "degenerate program" for "commo perverts".

Senator Anning described the move by Facebook to unpublish his page as an attack on free speech.

"What we essentially have is a foreign corporation deciding what the Australian people can and cannot hear," he said in a statement, where he described himself as "the latest victim of the Zuck".

"The Australian public will not even be given the choice because Mark Zuckerberg has already made it for you."

SOURCE 




Hate speech and machine intelligence

FOR ALL THE advances being made in the field, artificial intelligence still struggles when it comes to identifying hate speech. When he testified before Congress in April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it was “one of the hardest” problems. But, he went on, he was optimistic that “over a five- to 10-year period, we will have AI tools that can get into some of the linguistic nuances of different types of content to be more accurate in flagging things for our systems.” For that to happen, however, humans will need first to define for ourselves what hate speech means—and that can be hard because it’s constantly evolving and often dependent on context.

“Hate speech can be tricky to detect since it is context and domain dependent. Trolls try to evade or even poison such [machine learning] classifiers,” says Aylin Caliskan, a computer science researcher at George Washington University who studies how to fool artificial intelligence.

In fact, today’s state-of-the-art hate-speech-detecting AIs are susceptible to trivial workarounds, according to a new study to be presented at the ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security in October. A team of machine learning researchers from Aalto University in Finland, with help from the University of Padua in Italy, were able to successfully evade seven different hate-speech-classifying algorithms using simple attacks, like inserting typos. The researchers found all of the algorithms were vulnerable, and argue humanity’s trouble defining hate speech contributes to the problem. Their work is part of an ongoing project called Deception Detection via Text Analysis.

If you want to create an algorithm that classifies hate speech, you need to teach it what hate speech is, using data sets of examples that are labeled hateful or not. That requires a human to decide when something is hate speech. Their labeling is going to be subjective on some level, although researchers can try to mitigate the effect of any single opinion by using groups of people and majority votes. Still, the data sets for hate-speech algorithms are always going to be made up of a series of human judgment calls.

SOURCE 




1 October, 2018

How a 'right to be forgotten' could trigger a battle over free speech in Canada

A push by some legal experts to get Parliament to embrace a "right to be forgotten" for Canadians is setting up what could be a landmark battle over the conflict between privacy and freedom of expression on the internet.

The advent of social media and new information technologies has intensified the debate over whether individuals should have a legal tool to ensure that material harming their reputations doesn't haunt them forever.

This week, Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien served notice he intends to seek clarity from the Federal Court on whether existing laws already give Canadians the right to demand that search engines remove links to material that is outdated, incomplete or incorrect, a process called "de-indexing."

Following a round of consultations he launched in 2016, Therrien concluded in a draft report earlier this year that Canadians do have that right under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

Google, the world's dominant search engine firm, disagrees — and warns that a fundamental charter right is being threatened.

"The right to be forgotten impinges on our ability to deliver on our mission, which is to provide relevant search results to our users," said Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel. "What's more, it limits our users' ability to discover lawful and legitimate information."

SOURCE 






"Bacon" is now a naughty word

?A Newcastle mosque has been daubed with graffiti in an act of “disgusting” vandalism.

The word ‘bacon’ was spray-painted in large letters on the side of The Heaton Mosque and Islamic Centre, located on the corner of Rothbury Terrace and Heaton Road.

The vandalism was discovered by shocked residents on Friday morning.

Eating pork is forbidden under Islamic law, a belief which has previously been used to abuse Muslims.

In October 2017, two men were convicted at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court for smearing pork meat on the door of a mosque, according to the BBC.

“I’ve seen racist graffiti in Heaton before unfortunately but as far as I know the mosque has never been targeted in this way.  “It’s disgusting, we don’t want to see this sort of thing round here.”

Councillor John-Paul Stephenson, who represents the Heaton ward, said: “This is an outrageous attack on our community. Heaton is well loved for its diversity.

“This attack goes against everything we stand for. Councillors will be meeting with the mosque to discuss this and offer the support we can. “Attacks like this will not be tolerated in our community.”

A Northumbria Police spokesman : “No reports have been made to police but we encourage anyone who finds themselves a victim of this sort of crime to get in touch with officers.”

On Friday morning, Newcastle City Council removed the graffiti. A council spokesman said: “We aim to remove all offensive, racist and sexist graffiti within two working days.

“Where this is not possible, it will be obscured. Other types of graffiti on council-owned structures will be removed or obstructed when operationally possible.”

SOURCE 






BACKGROUND NOTES



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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


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