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

This is a backup copy of the original blog. See here for backups of my other blogs



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



April 30, 2024

VisitBritain issues 50-page inclusivity guide advising against words like 'blacklist', 'man hours' and 'blindspot'

A tourism agency has told workers they can't use words such as 'blindspot' or 'man hours' anymore as the language is not inclusive.

Instead of man hours, travel agency VisitBritain told firms hosting guests from overseas to say 'person hours' as to not to offend anyone.

According to its 50-page language guide, the word blacklist should be replaced by 'deny list' and blindspot by 'missed opportunity'.

The company gave out the 18-point inclusive term sheet to foster a 'culture of belonging', but it has been slammed as being 'out of touch', according to The Sun.  

VisitBritain - which is funded by the government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport - also warned not to use the term 'guru' as it is said to have been appropriated from Hindu culture.

Instead, the £54million-a-year taxpayer funded agency said to use the term 'expert'.

Last year, VisitBritain issued an 'accessible and inclusive' toolkit for those in the tourism business.

In the 2023 information pack, the section of 'inclusive language' encouraged using positive language when asking about disabilities.

It warned people against using negative language such as 'suffers from', 'is a victim of', 'handicapped', 'invalid', 'crippled by' or 'wheelchair bound'.

But the new guidance goes a step further, giving business partners a list of words they can and cannot say.

To avoid offending people with disabilities, the word 'lame' should not be used in a derogatory manner, with the agency suggesting 'uncool' or 'cheesy' as an alternative.

In the place of using 'sanity check', VisitBritain advised saying 'confidence check', and instead of saying 'man up', telling people to 'be brave'.

Similarly, it advises workers to say 'everyone' or 'team' instead of using the term 'guys' to describe a group, despite it being commonly used in an all encompassing manner for all genders.

The inclusivity sheet was sent to the agency's partners to 'help shape the future' of the events hosted.

The same information pack tell event organisers to cater for those who don't drink alcohol and to set up 'low sensory' rooms, according to The Sun.

It tells partners that: 'Words and phrases used for generations are no longer acceptable'.

But Sir John Hayes CBE, who is the chairman of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs which focusses on 'authentic conservatism', slammed the document.

He told The Sun that those who made the inclusivity sheet are 'out of touch' and should be 'backlisted and blackballed' - using one of the words VisitBritain asked business partners to avoid.

The travel agency's role is to grow Britain's visitor economy and encourage tourists to explore the country.

It also advises the Government on tourism, providing research and insights into the industry.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13358805/VisitBritain-inclusivity-guide-advising-against-words-blacklist-man-hours-blindspot.html

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April 29, 2024

Wakeley church stabbing: Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel makes emotional return to Christ The Good Shepherd Church, defends free speech

An Assyrian Christian Bishop who was allegedly stabbed in a terror attack inside his Sydney church has made an emotional return to his pulpit.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel received a standing ovation from parishioners on Sunday before delivering a fiery sermon defending free speech and slamming Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

He was allegedly attacked by a 16-year-old boy during a livestream of his sermon at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley in Sydney's south-west on April 15 in horrifying scenes that shocked Australia and the world.

Less than a fortnight later he returned to the altar for Palm Sunday, which is part of Orthodox Easter.

Sporting a white eyepatch over his right eye and carrying a gold cross, Bishop Emmanuel stood in the same place where he was allegedly stabbed and began his service in Arabic.

Several days after he called for the footage of his alleged attack to remain online when the government ordered it removed from social media, the bishop called out Mr Albanese in an impassioned defence of freedom of speech and religion.

Bishop Emmanuel said that he cannot 'fathom' how freedom of speech could not be possible in a democratic country like Australia.

'I say to our beloved, the Australian government, and our beloved Prime Minister, the honourable Mr Albanese, I believe in one thing and that is the integrity and the identity of the human being,' he said.

'This human identity, this human integrity, is a God-given gift, no one else.

'Every human being has the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion... I should not worry for my life to be exposed to threat or to be taken away.'

He pointed out that Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Atheists had the right to express their beliefs.

'Also the Christians have the right to express their beliefs, and for us to say, that free speech is dangerous, that free speech cannot be possible in a democratic country, I'm yet to fathom this,' he continued.

'We should be able as civilised human beings, as intellectuals, we should be able to criticise, to speak, and maybe, at some certain times, we may sound, or we may come across offensive to some degree, but we should be able to say, "I should not worry for my life to be exposed to threat or to be taken away".

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13359089/Wakeley-church-stabbing-Bishop-Mar-Mari-Emmanuel-makes-emotional-return-Christ-Good-Shepherd-Church.html

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April 28, 2024

Meet the UCLA medical school 'fat pride' staffer whose compulsory lectures warn trainee doctors that using the word obesity is 'violence'

Fat pride is rubbish.  Why would anyone be proud of being fat when it is both physically and socially disabling?  The whole idea is simply a defence mechanism by fatties who are unwilling to admit that they eat too much for comfort.  

I once had a medical condition that caused me to eat only half as much as I usually did.  And the weight just dropped off!  I was so pleased about it that I was slow to get the medical condition attended to.

And the whole point of gastric sleeves is to make the person cut back on how much they eat. And I have seen some real transformations in people who have had a sleeve put in. I know one lady whose love-life was really transformed by a sleeve

It really is simple.  If you don't want to be fat, you just have to eat less.  There is nothing inevitable or complicated about it.  What you do to cause yourself to eat less is another matter.  It may not be easy but it is within your power.


UCLA medical school had been condemned by a renowned Harvard doctor for forcing students to take a 'fat-positivity' class.

All first year medical students at UCLA are required to read an essay by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-proclaimed 'fat liberationist' who claims that 'fatphobia is medicine's status quo' and that weight loss is a 'hopeless endeavor.'

Mercedes's article, titled 'No Health, No Care: The Big Fat Loophole in the Hippocratic Oath,' is on the required reading list for the mandatory Structural Racism and Health Equity course.

The class syllabus, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, shows what students at the elite medical school are learning - which has attracted attention from experts nationwide who disagree with the teachings of the course.

UCLA 'has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate,' said Flier. 'As a longstanding medical educator, I found this course truly shocking.'

The essay by Mercedes details how weight has come to be 'pathologized and medicalized in racialized terms.'

She offers guidance on 'resisting entrenched fat oppression,' according to the course syllabus.

Mercedes claims that 'ob*sity' is a slur 'used to exact violence on fat people' - particularly 'Black, disabled, trans, poor fat people.'

'This is a profoundly misguided view of obesity, a complex medical disorder with major adverse health consequences for all racial and ethnic groups,' Flier said - adding that teaching these 'ignorant' ideas to medical students is 'malpractice'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13351967/UCLA-medical-school-fat-pride-obesity-condemned-Harvard-doctor.html

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April 25, 2024

Australia: Christian Bishop Wants Video of His Stabbing to Remain Online



This will put the cat among the  pigeons.   It will make the  authoritarians of Left and Right who want to censor us  explain WHY they want to ban this video.  To my simple mind I cannot see any intelligent rationale for the ban. It happened  so let us show it.  People need to know what is going on,  Not have it covered up.  Bravo for the bishop

The Assyrian Christian bishop who was attacked during a live-streamed sermon has said he does not want footage of the incident removed from the internet.

The video of the multiple stabbing attack, is at the heart of an ongoing war of words and a legal battle between Australian authorities and X owner Elon Musk.

On April 22, lawyers for the eSafety Commission applied to the Federal Court for an injunction to compel the social media platform to block all videos of the incident across IPs globally—a request, X says, extends far beyond the jurisdiction of local authorities.

On April 24, during a case management hearing, X representative, Marcus Hoyne, provided an affidavit from injured Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel who said the video should not be censored.

“There’s recently been an affidavit … from the bishop, the victim of the attack, stating that he’s strongly of the view that the material should be available,” Mr. Hoyne said.

Mr. Hoyne also said the attempts by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to implement a global ban on the spread of the video was “exorbitant.”

He further said the footage was now subject to the “Streisand effect”—the unintended consequence of attempting to hide, remove, or censor information—and instead, resulting in even more publicity.

Any move to remove the video would now be pointless because it had spread beyond the few dozen URLs initially identified by the eSafety commissioner.

The judge ordered the matter to be heard again on May 10 when X could supply more detailed arguments.

The attack occurred in the Western Sydney suburb of Wakeley with footage showing a 16-year-old walking up to the bishop during a live-streamed sermon, before the young man began repeatedly striking the church leader with a flick knife, which appeared to malfunction.

The incident occurred barely two days after a knife attack spree in the east of Sydney, at the sprawling Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre, that resulted in six deaths.

Both incidents have spurred authorities to crackdown on “misinformation” and related videos on social media.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/christian-bishop-wants-video-of-his-stabbing-to-remain-online-5636050

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April 24, 2024

It was like the Stasi has come to my door': Woke Exeter University bangs on student's door and threatens him with expulsion after he is overheard saying... 'veganism is wrong'

A philosophy student overheard through the wall of his room saying 'veganism is wrong' and 'gender fluidity is stupid' was threatened with expulsion by his university, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Robert Ivinson said he was disciplined after a student next door in halls of residence at Exeter University heard the comments then complained he had been offensive and 'transphobic'.

Mr Ivinson, who expressed the views in a phone call to a friend, was hauled before university officials and put on a 'behavioural contract' for the rest of his studies.

He was warned he could be expelled if the university thought he had done anything else wrong, and told by letter he had been found guilty of harassment.

Last night, critics condemned Mr Ivinson's punishment as an example of the 'insidious erosion' of free speech in the UK's academic institutions.

Edward Skidelsky – director of the Committee for Academic Freedom, academics fighting to maintain free expression on campuses – said: 'It's extraordinary that in 21st century Britain eavesdroppers can be rewarded, and a student punished for remarks made to a friend in the privacy of his room.

'Robert's case once again underlines the insidious erosion of the freedom to express opinions and ideas which is playing out at our universities.'

At the time of the complaint, Mr Ivinson – who had just started his first year of a philosophy degree – was alone with the door closed.

Mr Ivinson, who is 6ft 5in with a deep intonation, said his voice often carried without him realising.

When an officer from the university's estate patrol banged on his door to tell him his female neighbour had complained, the mature student was shaken.

'It was like the Stasi had come to my door,' he said. 'He stuck his foot in my door and said you've been saying some very offensive things.'

Mr Ivinson was called to a disciplinary hearing and grilled by university officials.

He told The Mail on Sunday: 'The first thing they read out was that I had said veganism is wrong. I couldn't believe it – I thought I was mishearing them. I asked them to repeat it three or four times because I didn't believe I was sitting there for saying that veganism is wrong.'

He says he made the comments about gender fluidity and veganism, but maintains other statements he was alleged to have made had been misheard, such as that President Assad of Syria was 'a good guy'. He says he stated the dictator was 'not a good guy'.

He also denies saying 'people should not parade their sexuality in a gay bar'.

He insists he said that while uncomfortable with public displays of affection – gay or straight – he had no problem if gay people wished to demonstrate their sexuality in bars or clubs.

He says he apologised to the officials for the disturbance but maintained his right to speak freely in his own room. 'I was totally private apart from that someone heard me through a brick wall.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13331757/It-like-Stasi-come-door-Woke-Exeter-University.html

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April 23, 2024

To Defend Free Speech, the Senate Should Reject the TikTok Ban

As part of a foreign aid package, the House of Representatives this weekend passed a bill that would ban TikTok unless its parent company ByteDance sells its stake within one year. Because ByteDance refuses to divest, and the Chinese government would not, in any case, approve the sale, the bill amounts to an attempt by Congress to ban a single company.

The bill’s sponsors are emphasizing the legislation’s aim of preventing China from using TikTok to access U.S. user data and manipulate the platform’s algorithm to alter the content reaching Americans.

In light of the bill’s dire implications for Americans’ First Amendment rights, however, the Senate should reject the bill. A failure by the Senate to defeat the bill would provide the next president with a mandate not only to target TikTok, but also to weaken principles that underwrite the Constitution’s guarantees of free speech.

If President Biden signs the bill into law, as he has promised, it would immediately and appropriately face constitutional challenges. The First Amendment case would focus on the rights of Americans who use TikTok, as they would lose their ability to gather information and transmit political messaging using the app. The bill would constrain public discourse for those using TikTok to communicate political messages and other speech that falls directly within the core protections of the Constitution’s free speech guarantees.

Recent precedents suggest that TikTok would have a strong case. In 2020, a federal district court blocked a proposed ban on the Chinese-owned social media app WeChat on First Amendment grounds. The rationale offered by the executive branch for banning WeChat was similar to the arguments advanced by Congress for banning TikTok—that WeChat enabled the Chinese regime to collect data on Americans and manipulate content distributed on the app.

The ruling in the WeChat case enjoining the executive order noted that the ban would “effectively eliminate the plaintiffs’ key platform for communication, slow or eliminate discourse, and are the equivalent of censorship of speech or a prior restraint on it.” These same considerations would be tested in federal court if Congress passed a law banning TikTok.

TikTok bans have fared no better at the state level. A federal district court has already found that Montana’s effort to ban the app violates the free speech rights of the state’s citizens.

It is difficult to see how a forced sale of TikTok would survive constitutional challenges. The law would erode foundational principles that animate the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees. TikTok is among the most important open forums where Americans can exchange in a “free trade in ideas” as Justice Holmes put it in his landmark dissent more than a century ago in Abrams v. United States.

Giving the government stronger authorities to crack down on social media platforms on the basis of foreign ties would weaken the ability of TikTok users to engage anonymously. Courts have expanded First Amendment protections for anonymous speech and the platforms that enable it as a means of encouraging people to express ideas without fear of retaliation.

Even if the government exercises this power judiciously against Chinese propagandists, it would impede rights on the other side of the First Amendment coin—the freedom of Americans to receive speech directed at them.

Perhaps most significantly, a TikTok ban would strike at the heart of what makes the United States exceptional. Broad protections of free speech, whether we like that speech or not, make American territory a safe haven for constitutional liberties no matter how unevenly they are protected around the world.

National security considerations can, at times, provide a basis for curtailing free speech. But Congress has not provided a sufficient rationale for why alleged and, in many cases, speculative threats from TikTok require a federal ban of the platform altogether.

Neither TikTok’s ownership nor its influence justify an erosion of the Constitution’s core First Amendment principles.  

https://townhall.com/columnists/pratik-chougule/2024/04/23/to-defend-free-speech-the-senate-should-reject-the-tiktok-ban-n2638120

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April 22, 2024

Rumble Says it Received ‘Censorship’ Demands From Australia and New Zealand

Rumble CEO and founder Chris Pavlovski says he has received “censorship” demands from authorities in Australia, New Zealand, and other countries.

Mr. Pavlovski said the video-sharing platform noticed a “dramatic increase” in global censorship.

This comes after Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant ordered social media companies to remove videos and images related to two stabbing events in Sydney last week.

“If they fail to remove the content, then we can go to search engines such as Google or Bing to really minimise the amount of content that Australians can see,” she said, referring to additional measures that could be implemented to restrict the sharing of content.

Rumble is a NASDAQ-listed online video-sharing platform with a focus on free speech that enables people to share and monetise videos.

Explaining his concern Mr. Pavloski noted censorship infringed on “everyone’s human rights.”

“It’s the worst I’ve seen it. First France, then Brazil, and now it feels like everyone is following France and Brazil’s lead. [U.S.] State Department needs to intervene ASAP,” Mr. Pavlovski said on X.

The social media post from the Rumble founder attracted the attention of X owner Elon Musk, who posted one word “same.”
Mr. Musk also labelled eSafety Commissioner Ms. Inman Grant the “Australian censorship commissar” in a separate post.

X also revealed it had received a takedown order from the eSafety boss and a threat of daily fines worth hundreds of thousands.

“The recent attacks in Australia are a horrific assault on free society. Our condolences go out to those who have been affected, and we stand with the Australian people in calling for those responsible to be brought to justice,” X posted.

“Following these events, the Australian eSafety commissioner ordered X to remove certain posts in Australia that publicly commented on the recent attack against a Christian Bishop. These posts did not violate X’s rules on violent speech.”

The global platform said it does not believe eSafety’s order was in the scope of Australian law, and complied with the directive pending a legal challenge.

“X has now received a demand from the eSafety commissioner that X globally withhold these posts or face a daily fine of $785,000 AUD (about $500,000 USD),” the platform posted.

“While X respects the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction, the eSafety commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally.  We will robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/rumble-says-it-received-censorship-demands-from-australia-and-new-zealand-5634291

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April 21, 2024

Appalling official censorship in Australia



Sky News host Rowan Dean blasts NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb after she urged people not to share misinformation on social media and to check police resources for new information.

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April 18, 2024

North Carolina high school student, 16, is suspended for saying 'illegal alien' in class

A North Carolina high school student has been suspended for using the phrase 'illegal alien' in class.

Christian McGhee, 16, was suspended for three days from Central Davidson High School, after using the term during a classroom discussion about word meanings.

Christian questioned the term 'alien' in an assignment, asking if it referred to 'space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards,' as reported by the Carolina Journal.

His comment reportedly offended another student who physically threatened McGhee, leading to the involvement of school authorities.

'I didn't make a statement directed towards anyone — I asked a question,' Christian told the Carolina Journal.

'I wasn't speaking of Hispanics because everyone from other countries needs green cards, and the term 'illegal alien' is an actual term that I hear on the news and can find in the dictionary,' he added.

His suspension could impact his chance of securing an athletic scholarship for college as he played on his school's track and cross country teams.

His mother, Leah McGhee, said that despite their efforts, the assistant principal has been unwilling to remove the infraction from Christian's record.

'Because of his question, our son was disciplined and given THREE days OUT of school suspension for 'racism,' wrote Christian's mother in the email, reported by the Carolina Journal.

https://gazette.com/news/wex/north-carolina-high-school-student-suspended-for-using-the-term-illegal-alien/article_28e2a01a-ca3c-5bf8-9410-8e6617006cad.html

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April 17, 2024

Germany plans to unveil censorship zones which violate freedom of speech and free assembly

The German government is planning to introduce so-called censorship zones in certain locations – just like the UK. These censorship zones around abortion facilities are established to silence the pro-life view. These zones are not “pro-choice”, they’re no-choice.

And their actions deliberately ignore recent rulings by the Federal Administrative Court. Several weeks ago, the federal government approved a draft law on censorship zones to be established in certain locations in front of and around German abortion-related facilities in which certain opinions can no longer be expressed and certain peaceful activities prohibited.

What are censorship zones?

Censorship zones are areas defined by the local administration or even the legislature where specific opinions, actions or gatherings are prohibited. These zones censor certain expressions of opinion, hence the name ‘censorship zone’.

A look at Great Britain shows where restrictions on peaceful prayers can lead. In recent months, several people have been arrested there due to local censorship zones. The arrests occurred because individuals were quietly praying on a public street. The zones there have led to even silent prayer and, thus, thoughts being criminalized. We must not stand for this. Here’s why:

Censorship zones violate fundamental freedoms

Censorship zones are advanced under the guise of protecting women, but they are levied against peaceful individuals who in no way condone the harassment of women. After all, harassment is already prohibited under German criminal law.

What is most dangerous, however, is the fact that certain opinions are banned because they’re unpopular. Even if we disagree on abortion, we should agree that basic human rights—like free expression and free thought—are too important to throw out the window. 

We all have the basic human right to think, act, and pray in accordance with our convictions.

Only recently, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed the right to freedom of assembly and freedom of opinion of a pro-life prayer group.

They gathered across the street from an abortion facility and quietly prayed. The police did not find harassment while observing the group in Pforzheim.

Similarly in the UK, A pro-life activist is being investigated for a third time for praying silently in a censorship zone.

She had nothing with her, did not prevent women from entering the abortion facility, and did not even speak to anyone. A silent prayer in her mind was enough to bring her to court – a serious violation of freedom of thought.

Censorship zones are clearly having serious consequences for fundamental freedoms in the UK and we cannot let the same thing happen in Germany. 

These zones silence without offering help

Censorship zones do nothing to protect women. Rather, they block women from hearing about the offers of help available to them.

The sad reality is that these zones fail the women who choose abortion out of a sense of helplessness. By banning peaceful offers of help and alternative options, many women will feel even more alone.

Shouldn’t women in crisis pregnancies have access to help and alternative options to abortion?

If the state can ban freedom of expression and assembly in front of certain establishments, why not in other places?

There is no logical endpoint for such censorship

https://adfinternational.org/commentary/germany-plans-for-censorship-zones

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April 16, 2024

Scotland’s New Transgender ‘Hate Crime’ Law Already Showing How It Leads to Tyranny

Scotland’s new “hate crime” law already is demonstrating how it will be used to squash dissent and free speech.

The so-called Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which went into force in Scotland on April Fools’ Day, adds age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity to a list of protected classes.

The law provides for various potential punishments, including jail time.

The new law has been fiercely criticized by author J.K. Rowling, creator of the “Harry Potter” series, and many others who rightly see it as an attack on the freedom of speech.

Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said the bill is about “protecting people from a rising tide of hatred.” But who will protect the people’s God-given right to free speech?

When asked about activists who are creating lists of other people to target when the law goes into effect, Yousaf said that the only ones who should worry are those who are stirring up hatred.

But who decides what exactly stirring up “hatred” really means?

Siobhian Brown, Scotland’s minister for victims and community safety, was asked whether intentionally “misgendering” someone would be considered a crime under the law. At first she said, “Not at all,” then continued: “It could be reported and it could be investigated. Whether or not the police would think it was criminal is up to Police Scotland.”

Very reassuring.

The response to the law has been predictable.

Scottish police reportedly “received more than 7,000 online reports of offences in the first week since the introduction of a new hate crime law.”

Police have called the law an unsustainable burden on their force. Frankly, I’m more concerned with the burden this law and ones like it are placing on the fraying threads holding up the fleeting notion that those living under such measures really live in a “free” society.

I don’t buy the premise that this law was created just to protect the vulnerable and that the Scottish people have nothing to worry about.

Let’s call this what it is: a secular, authoritarian blasphemy law, as my Scottish friend Madeline Kearns described it in National Review.

My feeling is that this legislation was created by left-wing politicians to be a weapon in the hands of their activist base. The institutional-activist partnership is part of the same perverse circulatory system, and the pols are simply putting another prop in place to secure their power to control thought and discourse.

Despite a flood of evidence that the entire gender transition movement is based on lies and false premises, it nevertheless remains the dominant ethos in the West’s elite cultural and political institutions.

These institutions don’t rely on science or popularity, but are instead bound together by a particular globalist ideology and worldview. Whether one calls this “NextGen Marxism,” as my colleague Mike Gonzalez has in his new book, or DEI, or simply the Left, the ethos is undeniably dominant in the West’s most elite circles.

That’s not changing, yet.

What is changing is that there is now a more aggressive, one might call it “populist,” counter to this worldview that’s growing against our farcical pseudo-elite.

This movement is broad and includes many “intellectuals” as well as ordinary people. It’s caused a serious shakeup in Left/Right politics as some liberals, like Rowling and Bari Weiss, have moved to the Right—especially in their criticism of the transgender narrative that places ideology over reality.

Scotland’s new hate crime law is intended to suppress the counter movement, to create a climate of fear where people take a serious risk by speaking up and telling the truth.

The West’s cultural elites can’t have people willing to say that the emperor has no clothes or that a man can’t become a woman with impunity. That threatens the regime, the interlocking lies that the elites tell themselves and use to secure their positions within its institutional tendrils.

So, what the cultural elites are doing is what plenty of other authoritarian and totalitarian societies have done in the past. They are making the cost of telling the truth high enough that a general mass of people will be afraid to declare it publicly or even privately.

They are dressing up these dictatorial designs in the language of preventing “hate” and by making the penalties seem low enough that they don’t immediately illicit images of other notorious, oppressive states of the past.

“Hey, don’t worry, we won’t prosecute you for misgendering someone, yet. Unless the police and the courts say so, of course, but that’s not my department.”

That’s effectively what Scottish politicians and other proponents of transgender hate crime laws are saying.

Don’t buy it.

Anti-speech laws to intimidate dissenters aren’t the final solution to the problem; they instead are intended to establish a government-mandated norm of what is considered acceptable speech. These laws are a firm but insistent swat directed at anyone who might be thinking of telling the truth rather than spouting the party-approved narrative.

More repressive laws come later if the people don’t comply.

Sure, most cases of alleged hate speech under this law won’t lead to arrests or significant fines. At least for now. But how many people are going to be willing to speak the truth when there’s a chance they could get arrested, face a lawsuit, or even end up in jail?

Most people aren’t Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The creators of these laws know that and are counting on the probability that most aren’t even a Rowling, or a Riley Gaines, or a Ray Shelton either.

That’s why these “small” threats to liberty must be met and defeated now. Now is the time to refuse to live by lies while the stakes still aren’t quite gulags.

We must, like Thomas Jefferson, swear hostility to every tyranny over the mind of man.

In the United States we are fortunate to have the First Amendment, and that may at least slow down this rush to control speech and thought. But that won’t keep back the tide of suffocating, increasingly government-mandated groupthink forever. Little islands of liberty aren’t good enough.

Although the gender transition ideology seems strongest in the United States, my feeling is that if it can be beaten, it will be beaten here.

Refuse to live by lies while the law is still on our side, and create laws to protect the truth rather than suppress the truth to create victims. That’s the way we will preserve liberty and thwart the coming of a new Dark Age.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/12/scotlands-new-transgender-hate-crime-law-already-showing-how-it-leads-to-tyranny/

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April 15, 2024

I too have been censored

It's a bit ironical that the author of a blog promoting free speech should be censored but it has happened again on my  "Dissecting Leftism" blog

Google own blogspot, who host my writings so it is Google who are the censors.  They can delete anything that I write without consultation.

I have noted one such deletion on my  "Dissecting Leftism" blog a few hours ago

The deletion does not bother me too much as it is of a post that appeared nearly a month ago. And the article remains online in the place I got it from

The thing that promotes Google censorship is mention of some bad effect of vaccines so that is interesting in itself.  What are they trying to hide?  The cat is well and truly out of the bag when it comes to dangerous side effects of the Covid vaccines so their censorship efforts seem futile to me.  Is it just a formality?  Maybe.

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April 14, 2024

University of Melbourne caves to Fascist thuggery as Israeli academic silenced

One of Australia’s most prestigious universities has cancelled a speech by an Israeli engineering academic after it had been advised the event would be ­“severely disrupted”.

Professor Tal Shima, an aerospace engineer, had been scheduled to speak to a small gathering of staff and students at Melbourne University’s engineering faculty on Thursday, but the lecture was abruptly cancelled.

The Australian understands the faculty made the decision to cancel following a number of threats to disrupt it.

The pro-Palestinian group UniMelbforPalestine demanded the event be cancelled, citing Professor Shima’s position at the Israeli Institute of Technology. The professor has, among other roles, been dean of aerospace ­engineering, which the group claimed involved “researching weapons” used by Israel and which meant he had been ­“directly involved in the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza”.

It also claimed research ­organisations he worked for had been funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defence and the US Air Force.

On Thursday the Instagram page of the group – “a grassroots collective of University of Melbourne students, staff and alumni organising on campus for a free Palestine” – boasted that the event had been cancelled.

“Breaking news: Melbourne University’s engineering faculty has succumbed to our pressure and canceled (sic) its event hosting an Israeli professor complicit in the genocide in Gaza,” it said.

“Yet another win for justice and accountability by Melbourne University’s community against this corrupt Zionist management.”

A Melbourne University spokeswoman confirmed the lecture had been called off because of safety concerns.

“Following clear indications that the seminar was going to be severely disrupted, the faculty of engineering and information technology cancelled the seminar,” the spokeswoman said.

“Freedom of speech is respected and supported at the University of Melbourne, and is central to our values and identity. We welcome debate and protest on campus, providing it does not extend to violence, threat or intimidation.”

Professor Shima was unable to be contacted on Thursday. He is understood to be on sabbatical at the Australian National University.

It is unclear what he was planning to speak about at the lecture. The Australian understands the audience was expected to number fewer than 50 and he was also planning to meet with several Melbourne University academics.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion told The Australian “if universities capitulate to campaigns of intimidation, it means that small bands of extremists will determine which nationalities and which ideas are allowed on campuses”.

“This places the free exchange of ideas, for which universities exist, at risk,” he said. “We call for the invitation to be immediately reinstated and for the university to make clear that violent extremism and exclusion, on the basis of national origin, will not be tolerated.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/university-of-melbourne-caves-as-israeli-academic-silenced/news-story/98e35ca8addaa76437c3d39988ab1e55

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11 April, 2024

What to Know About Elon Musk’s Battle With a Brazilian Judge Over Speech on Social Media

More Latin American tyranny

When billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter—now X—in 2022, some feared that the self-avowed free-speech “absolutist” would turn the platform into a free-for-all for disinformation. Now, as a Brazilian judge seeks to crack down on fake news on social media, he and Musk have found each other at odds in a growing spat that could have significant consequences for Musk, Brazil, and X.

On Saturday, X’s Global Government Affairs team posted that it had been forced to block “certain popular accounts in Brazil” without, in its view, sufficient explanation. It was prohibited, it said, from publicizing what accounts were impacted as well as what court or judge issued the orders.

“We believe that such orders are not in accordance with the Marco Civil da Internet or the Brazilian Federal Constitution, and we challenge the orders legally where possible,” the post said. “The people of Brazil, regardless of their political beliefs, are entitled to freedom of speech, due process, and transparency from their own authorities.”

Tensions escalated when Musk, in a series of posts, called out the judge, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, by name and said X would not abide by his orders no matter the consequences. Musk later said de Moraes ordered the suspension of accounts belonging to “sitting members of the parliament and major journalists.”

“These are the most draconian demands of any country on Earth!” Musk said in one post.

“We will probably lose all revenue in Brazil and have to shut down our office there,” he said in another. “But principles matter more than profit.”

“This judge has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil,” he said in another. “He should resign or be impeached.”

In turn, de Moraes issued a decision Sunday saying he would include Musk in his larger investigation as well as initiate a new inquiry specifically into the X owner, whom he accused of obstruction of justice and incitement to crime—actions, in the judge’s description, that “disrespect Brazil’s sovereignty.” ...

Right-wing politicians, including Bolsonaro, have accused de Moraes of overstepping his authority and abusing his power, though many of de Moraes’ defenders argue that the judge’s approach is sound, given the fragility of democracy in the country....

And Brazil’s Secretary of Social Communication Paulo Pimenta posted on X in response to de Moraes’ opening of an investigation into Musk: “We will not be intimidated. Our Country is sovereign and no one is going to impose their authoritarian will and enforce the logic that money makes their ‘business model’ above the Federal Constitution.” [A nice case of projection here. Who exactly is being authoritarian?]

https://time.com/6964518/elon-musk-brazil-judge-moraes-free-speech-disinformation/

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10 April, 2024

‘Misinformation’ Is the Censors’ Excuse

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month in the momentous case of Murthy v. Missouri. At issue is the constitutionality of what government authorities did to censor speech that departed from preferred narratives.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson posed a hypothetical to Louisiana Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguiñaga: “Suppose someone started posting about a new teen challenge that involved teens jumping out of windows at increasing elevations. . . . Kids all over the country start doing this. There is an epidemic. Children are seriously injuring or even killing themselves in situations. Is it your view that government authorities could not declare those circumstances a public emergency and encourage social media platforms to take down the information that is instigating this problem?”

Mr. Aguiñaga might have countered with a question of his own: What “information”? Whether government authorities would be justified in seeking to suppress such videos is an important question. But it isn’t a question about information, misinformation or disinformation.

What would be the correct information? If we rendered the video as a statement, it would be something like: It is valiant or cool to jump out of third-floor windows. That statement is foolish, wrongheaded, false. But “misinformation”? That is a category error.

What’s “cool” is no more a factual question than whether “Citizen Kane” or “Rear Window” is the better movie. What’s cool to confused kids is a matter of interpretation and judgment, which are far beyond mere information.

In Murthy, however, the government defends its actions in terms of combatting misinformation and disinformation. The administration and other practitioners and proponents of censorship thereby pretend that they are merely protecting the public from cut-and-dried falsehoods. In doing so, they misrepresent their actions and attempt to evade responsibility for arrogating to themselves the decision of what is safe and sound for people to see and hear.

In turn, they portray free-speech advocates as supporting falsehoods, even lies. The “misinformation” stratagem kneecaps them by trapping their objections in the limited dimension of information, forcing them to epistemologize to fight off censorship. Here we are, on the opinion page, talking about how information differs from interpretation and judgment.

The approach is attractive to censors because it flatters their vanity, frees them from accountability, and rigs the game against their opponents. Hubris built the Tower of Babel, and the result was semantic chaos. Today we see hubris and semantic chaos in censorship operations that claim to be combatting “misinformation.”

Knowledge can’t be flattened down to information. Once we appreciate the richness of knowledge, we see that anti-“misinformation” projects are miscarriages of civility, decency and the rule of law. We must rediscover the norms of openness, tolerance and free speech. Science, democracy, justice and everything else the censors purport to value depend on public confidence, and confidence depends on those liberal norms.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/misinformation-is-the-censors-excuse-murthy-supreme-court-covid-social-media-27ccb7c8

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9 April, 2024

Black ban this!

In a bid to help you get through the week without offending anyone’s sensitivities, no easy task I know, allow me to bring you up to speed on your use of pronouns as promoted by posters that have appeared around the University of Queensland campus heralding the arrival of the neopronoun.

Forget he/him, she/her and they/them and, enter the neopronouns. These, students are told, are a new category of pronoun such as “ze, hir, hirs, xe, xem and xyr”.

“Neopronouns,” they are told, “can be used by anyone.

“They don’t hold a specific meaning and are a way for someone to best represent themselves like they would through clothing or their name.”

Obviously, if someone introduces themselves to you as an “xe” or a “hirs”, there is always the chance that simple-minded souls such as us might presume that they are suffering from a speech impediment or have hosed down a couple of coldies before leaving home.

This confusion is understandable, but rather than muttering something about having left the iron on and hurrying away, the correct response is to listen carefully.

Did they say they were a “ze” or an “xe” or an “xem’” or an “xyr”?

If you make a mistake, the correct response is to “give a brief but genuine apology, then correct yourself and move on. If someone makes a mistake with other people’s pronouns, politely and without shaming, correct them”.

I’m tempted to say that in simpler times before victimhood and self-obsession took hold, things were more black and white, but that could cause offence and I wouldn’t want that.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/mike-oconnor/mike-oconnor-why-im-seeing-red-at-colourcoded-correctness-and-neopronouns-at-university-of-qld/news-story/6a6883f5451f4e8feeb89ce889e2a42b

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8 April, 2024

New York’s ban on pot ads struck down as violation of free speech

New York’s struggling legal pot industry has been thrown into turmoil yet again after a judge issued a ruling striking down state rules banning cannabis advertising and marketing as a violation of commerce and free speech.

The same Albany judge, Kevin Bryant, last summer struck down other Cannabis Control Board rules as illegal for providing convicted potheads preference in obtaining licenses over disabled vets and other applicants.

The legal woes last year froze the licensing and opening of new cannabis shops for months while the number of unlicensed marijuana shops sprouted across the city and state like weeds.  

In a withering 13-page ruling issued Wednesday, Bryant said the Office of Cannabis Management issued regulations outlawing promotions and marketing on third-party platforms without evidence backing them up, all but saying the edicts came out of thin air.

“There is nothing in the record to establish precisely how OCM developed the regulations,” Bryant said.

“This court must find that the conclusion was arbitrary and capricious and that there is no substantial basis in the record to support respondents [OCM’s] action. The regulations are unconstitutional violations of petitioners’ free speech rights.”

https://nypost.com/2024/04/04/us-news/new-yorks-ban-on-pot-ads-struck-down-as-violation-of-free-speech/

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7 April, 2024

Connecticut Dem successfully has new legislation amended to include phrase 'expectant mothers' after branding woke alternative 'pregnant persons' an 'affront'

A Connecticut Democrat successfully changed the wording of new legislation to add the phrase 'expectant mothers', after branding the original suggested language - 'pregnant persons' - an affront to women.

State Rep. Robyn Porter, a Democrat representing New Haven, proposed an amendment to House Bill 5454 to incorporate the term 'expectant mothers' during discussions on a bill regarding state funding on Thursday.

'My children call me mother, ma, mommy. It depends on the day,' Porter said Thursday. 'I don't answer to pregnant person or birthing person. That's not what I answer to.

'A huge part of my identity is wrapped around being a mother and a grandmother. So I find it an affront that someone would try to tell me that what they're putting on paper for the purpose of policy covers me when I'm telling you that it doesn't,' she continued.

The bill was originally launched by the Human Services Committee before reaching appropriations to incorporate the phrase 'expectant mothers' to lines five and six.

The original lines of the bill read '… shall create a strategic plan to maximize federal and state resources for mental health services for children six years old and younger, their caregivers and pregnant persons.'

Lawmakers voted 32-16 to adopt the term 'mothers' following a 35-minute debate.

The unexpected decision was achieved through a coalition of Republicans and members of the legislature's black and Puerto Rican Caucus - with all 16 opposing votes coming from Democrats.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13277473/Connecticut-Dem-Robyn-Porter-new-legislation-amended-phrase-mothers.html

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4 April, 2024

Journal of Free Speech Law: "Weaponized from the Beginning," by Prof. John Fabian Witt

The Introduction:

Accounts of modern free speech law typically begin in a moment of pragmatic optimism about the value of free speech in a flourishing democracy. In the usual story, which Laura Weinrib helpfully calls "the myth of the modern First Amendment," young progressives like Zechariah Chafee, Felix Frankfurter, Learned Hand, and Harold Laski draw on pragmatist philosophers like William James and Charles Pierce to persuade Justices Holmes and Brandeis of the U.S. Supreme Court that censorship was antithetical to democratic self-government. Holmes announced that the production of more speech served as the best test of truth. Brandeis, championed speech as a guarantor of democracy. Still others believed they had found in freedoms to speak a better way of managing dangerous radicalisms. Leading commentators ever since rest their accounts of the advent of free speech law on one or another variation of a new and hopeful conception of the function of speech in democracy.

Strangely, something like the opposite is more accurate. The distinctive feature of the moment in which modern free speech law arose was but grave new worries about the relationship between free communication and self-government. When Holmes and Brandeis first gave voice to free speech ideas in their famous dissents in the fall of 1919 and 1920, keen observers were coming to terms with a world of distortion and misinformation. Four long years of war propaganda had shown that speech by the powerful could dangerously destabilize public opinion in ostensibly democratic societies. The return to peace, too, had been accompanied by stunning displays of communications power. Storms of racist and nativist public opinion produced a wave of postwar racial pogroms. Employer propaganda smashed postwar strikes in the steel industry and elsewhere. A generation of public relations men left war propaganda efforts, entering new industries like marketing and advertising firmly convinced by their wartime work that information was supremely susceptible to manipulation and control.

At the beginning of modern free speech doctrine, close observers were coming to see speech as more than an indispensable foundation for democratic self-government, though it was that, too. Speech had also become—to adapt Justice Kagan's iconic phrase from a century later—a weapon for democracy's subversion.

Early observers of the World War I-era crisis of propaganda and misinformation did not treat it as a problem of free speech law, or not exactly. Freedom of speech in 1919 had barely been invented as a judicial doctrine; courts would not begin to protect speech against repressive laws until at least the late 1920s and 1930s. Absent a First Amendment to rely on, critics and advocates turned not to free speech doctrine in the courts—or not only to free speech doctrine in the courts—but to mediating institutions that offered bulwarks against distortions in the domain of public opinion.

In what follows, I sketch the views of two key participants in the formation of the free speech tradition in America. Walter Lippmann and Roger Baldwin both began their professional lives in the first and second decades of the 20th century on the left of American politics. Each participated in the formation of the modern First Amendment tradition: Lippmann as an interlocutor in the group of progressive pragmatists around Justice Holmes and Baldwin as founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. Over the course of their long careers, the two men veered toward different positions. Lippmann would become a center-right technocrat and a skeptic of democracy's capacity to rationally manage modern social problems. Baldwin would become the nation's best-known defender of civil liberties, offering a different kind of skepticism about majority rule, one rooted in individual rights against majoritarian control. But in the immediate wake of the war, they offered overlapping and trenchant accounts of the relationship between speech and what Jurgen Habermas would later call the public sphere. Neither man believed that unrestricted communication flows alone would sustain a flourishing domain of public opinion. To the contrary, each man came to see that powerful interests and propaganda campaigns badly distorted the kinds of public information on which democracy depended. Despairing of a solution to the crisis of information in the modern age, Lippmann turned to neutral expertise in the administrative state. Baldwin, by contrast, believed that the labor movement offered a more promising path, one that could rescue democratic values by offering a better ecosystem for the formation of opinion on collective questions. Like many of his generation, Baldwin called this vision industrial democracy.

Both strategies held value a century ago—and still do today. Much of our difficulty with lies and propaganda in early 21st century public opinion resides precisely in the legitimacy crisis of the administrative state and the collapse of the labor movement.

Baldwin's strategy for dealing with distortion in the public sphere is less well known than Lippmann's. In some respects, however, it is more promising as a model for our current moment. Unlike Lippmann, Baldwin never made the mistake of imagining that experts could stand outside the information cycles of the societies they purport to govern. Baldwin's industrial democracy is distinctive because it is to be built on institutions that are unabashed partisans in the struggle for life and in the management of information. Labor unions are not above the fray, they are in it. They are on their members' side. They pass along information that working-class citizens in a mass society can trust because it is in their interest to do so. At the same time, labor organizations' role constrains them from certain kinds of distortions. Unions' institutional interest in preserving the firms with which they bargain tethers them to reality. Labor, in other worlds, is dependent on and invested in rival institutions in a given community. For Baldwin, the genius of industrial democracy is thus that it offers what we might call an endogenous institutional foundation for public opinion formation. Industrial democracy does not rest on the impossible Lippmannian goal of transcending clashing interests through external authority. Instead, industrial democracy makes the interests of workers central to the way information is produced and received in public life.

The stories of Lippmann and Baldwin suggest that our crisis today is not only that new speech technologies like the internet have occasioned evermore dangerous opportunities for distortion of the public sphere. Distortion predated our particular technological juncture. Nor are lies and propaganda chiefly a problem in First Amendment doctrine; they have haunted the democratic public sphere under wildly varying doctrinal regimes. Our crisis today is in large part that key mediating institutions like the administrative state and the labor movement are in decay or even catastrophic decline.

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/04/03/journal-of-free-speech-law-weaponized-from-the-beginning-by-prof-john-fabian-witt/

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3 April, 2024

People point to huge upsurge in vocal Jew-hate in Australia. The majority want tougher laws

Australians are backing a federal plan to toughen the law against hate speech in a bid to shield minority groups from attack, as 57 per cent of voters perceive there has been a rise in racism because of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The exclusive findings of the Resolve Political Monitor poll highlight the rising anxiety about racial and religious vilification after months of protests against both sides of the war, lending support to a Labor pledge to impose criminal sanctions on those who target people in malicious online attacks.

But voters are split on whether the fierce debate is threatening community safety, with 40 per cent saying the country was less safe – up from 36 per cent in November – but 34 per cent saying there was no change, while the remainder were unsure.

The conclusions, in the latest Resolve Political Monitor conducted for this masthead, show that only 15 per cent of voters believe there has been no increase in racism and religious intolerance as a result of the conflict, while 57 per cent thought there had been a rise.

Hundreds of Jewish Australians were targeted last month in a “doxxing” attack that released their personal information online, while some rallies in support of Palestine have led to warnings about racist chants, and the Islamophobia Register Australia has reported a surge in attacks on Muslims.

Resolve director Jim Reed said the findings showed the strong community rejection of hate speech, racism and violent protest at a time of fierce argument about the war.

“It almost goes without saying that most Australians would object to hate speech, but they balance that against the need for expression free from government intervention,” he said.

“However, they are particularly attuned to the need to tackle it now given the dangers posed to domestic social cohesion by the Middle East conflict.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last month he wanted to fast-track laws to combat hate speech and make it a criminal offence to engage in doxxing, which is the malicious publication of someone’s personal information online.

The prime minister asked Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to put the laws to parliament, with the changes going ahead regardless of a separate political dispute over religious freedom and sex discrimination laws.

“The idea that in Australia, someone should be targeted because of their religion, because of their faith, whether they be Jewish or Muslim or Hindu or Catholic or Buddhist, is just completely unacceptable,” Albanese told radio station 2GB last month.

“And that’s why I’ve asked, as well, the Attorney-General to develop proposals to strengthen laws against hate speech, which we will be doing. This is not the Australia that we want to see.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has warned against vilification in repeated comments since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, saying people could be prosecuted under criminal law for intimidation.

“Hate speech and incitement of violence has zero place in our society. Let’s be very clear about it,” he said in December.

The Resolve Political Monitor asked if people believed stronger laws were needed to ban hate speech against people based on their faith, finding that 56 per cent were in favour and 19 per cent were against.

When voters were asked if the government should make it a criminal offence to engage in the malicious publication of private information online, 74 per cent backed the idea and only 4 per cent did not, with 22 per cent unsure.

A clear majority also supported action to make social media platforms remove the doxxing material, with 73 per cent in favour of this and 6 per cent against, with 21 per cent unsure.

There was strong majority support for action on doxxing across the political divide, although the support for action on hate speech was lower among Greens voters. While 61 per cent of Labor voters and 62 per cent of Coalition voters wanted to ban hate speech, the support was 52 per cent among Greens voters.

Respondents showed strong support for diversity in the annual report on social cohesion by the Scanlon Foundation, although many say the migrant intake is too high. The latest report, issued last November, found the proportion of people with a negative attitude towards Muslims fell from 41 per cent in 2019 to 27 per cent in 2023. The November report said 9 per cent had a negative attitude toward Jews. The survey work for the Scanlon report was conducted before the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7.

The Resolve Political Monitor surveyed 1610 eligible voters from Thursday to Sunday, generating results with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.

The question on racism in the Resolve Political Monitor was: “Some people have suggested that there has been a rise in racism and religious intolerance in Australia as a result of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Do you think this is the case or not?”

The Resolve survey found that 57 per cent said there had been an increase in racism since October, a view shared by 56 per cent of Labor voters, 62 per cent of Coalition voters and 58 per cent of Greens voters.

The survey found 33 per cent believed there was more antisemitism and 11 per cent thought there was more Islamophobia, while 55 per cent said there was both, or they were unsure. This was based on responses from 926 voters, the subset that said there was an increase in racism.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/people-point-to-a-rise-in-racism-in-australia-the-majority-want-tougher-laws-20240328-p5fg0k.html

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2 April, 2024

Elite Doctors Support Government Censorship in the Name of Public Safety

On March 25, Medpage Today gave us the pro-medical censorship argument, delivered by two doctors with impressive credentials who appear to be cheering on a 1984-style information-control future. Titled “Medical Misinfo Runs Rampant Online. The Gov't Must Retain the Right to Intervene,” this argument totally fails to understand the balance that must exist between the government’s right to inform and the free speech rights of citizens, especially in a rapidly changing field such as science. Benjamin D. Hoffman, MD, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, General pediatrician and Professor of Pediatrics at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and Oregon Health and Science University and Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPP, board certified and president of the American Medical Association, are the two authors.

Target: misinformation and disinformation

The two physicians seeking to muzzle tens of thousands of doctors aren't based on malicious intent, in fact quite the opposite. From their point of view, “Online misinformation about vaccines harms patients, undermines trust in science, and places additional burdens on our healthcare system through reduced vaccine uptake.” They go on to note that “the widespread proliferation of misinformation and disinformation has triggered higher levels of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, allowing a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases that we had nearly eradicated.”

And there has been an increase in measles cases and reports of vaccine hesitancy have led to a few percentage point reduction in children vaccination rates. But also, about 70% of the population lined up to get the COVID-19 vaccine under the premise that it would work like other vaccines. No one expected a third, fourth or even a fifth booster shot within just a couple years. To not be able to criticize the government and a powerful industry such as Pharma in a democratic society means, well, that you are no longer living in a democratic society. That a particular definition of science is exploited by a confluence of interests, a ministry of truth right out of George Orwell’s 1984 isn’t necessarily a stretch at that point.

To blame physicians that research and prescribe FDA approved repurposed drugs or that call out identified vaccine safety issues for vaccine hesitancy, and hostile to science-- classifying them as anti-vaxx, then advocating for the government to silence them, is frankly, a calling card of a precursor to an oppressive, overreaching state, and ultimately some form of fascism.

“Discredited medical falsehoods”

Admitting a tension between their goals and the US Constitution, our Medpage Today authors note that “Preventing the spread of vaccine misinformation without infringing on free speech protections in the First Amendment is a thorny legal issue that is at the heart of a landmark case now before the U.S. Supreme Court….”

They go on to state that our country’s top healthcare organizations and thousands of doctors think that “vaccine misinformation” is a grave threat to the public. The doctors say that they seek to partner with the federal government to advance “factual information.” They go on to note that the decision in Murthy v. Missouri, relating to when government advice becomes government coercion, is based on claims that the Biden administration “engaged in censorship during the pandemic by urging private social media companies to stop the spread of discredited medical falsehoods from their platforms to save lives.” But “discredited” scientific theories often turn out to be current, such as the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of COVID-19 and delegating to the government the authority to pre-determine scientific reality is a slippery slope, to say the least.

Ivermectin an open question

Our well-credentialed, well positioned doctors opine that “at stake in this case is what tools the government and public health agencies have at their disposal to combat medical misinformation. Without getting into the legal arguments on both sides, one thing is clear: to strip away government power to raise the alarm about patently false information on life-saving vaccines -- when illness and lives hang in the balance -- would be a devastating outcome.”

Using ivermectin as an example, they note that the government issued a warning of “serious adverse events” from the drug and unequivocally conclude, despite the mixed evidence, that “numerous studies showed it was entirely ineffective against the virus.” The ivermectin question is especially contentious, with the FDA recently settling a case by agreeing to take down its internet warnings against using the drug for COVID-19.

In concluding, the doctors offer that:

“Stopping the spread of medical misinformation is an enormous task, and we cannot expect any single entity to accomplish this challenge. Those of us who have taken an oath to protect the health and well-being of patients share the responsibility to separate fact from fiction.

Anything less than a comprehensive effort to prevent the dissemination of medical misinformation -- using the powers of the federal government, public health agencies, healthcare
organizations, social media companies and media outlets.”

Government truths to challenged facts

This unabashed call for the US government to continue its role as truth arbiter in the COVID-19 context is misguided and dangerous to civil rights and just plain stupid given the unfolding facts—both known generally to the public and those that will emerge.

The government told us the vaccines would present infection and spread; both of these claims turned out to be wrong. The World Health Organization first informed the world the 70% vaccination target was to achieve herd immunity because the vaccine would stop viral transmission. Of course, they were incorrect and they had to adjust the messaging. Frankly, the WHO was against coercive measures by state actors such as vaccine mandates.

On the other hand, WHO acted coercively if they found out a  developing nation authorized ivermectin on an emergency basis. We had more than one national government representative or their proxy contact TrialSite asking us to take a story down out of fear of WHO reprisal.

How about the WHO’s move celebrating  the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh’s success in its spring 2021 battle against Delta, an unprecedented public health effort that turned an absolute crisis around in months. Part of the multi-faceted regimen was a home medicine kit including ivermectin, doxycycline and zinc. WHO omitted that from their celebratory press release and U.S. media when asked about it lied and said ivermectin was not involved. Merely mentioning this truthful piece of news brought immediate censorship on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter (pre-Musk) and others.

Bill Gates has gone on the record that it’s time to find vaccines that are actually sterilizing in effect. But listen to Drs Hoffman and Ehrenfeld, if he [Gates] were a doctor, they would be muzzled. By January 2023, as reported in TrialSite Bill Gates all but announced the current COVID-19 mRNA vaccines as dead on arrival. Gates had managed to earn a fortune on his pre-pandemic bet on the BioNTech mRNA vaccine, however, —as that was the experimental asset selected by Pfizer to commercialize. But Mr. Gates was surprisingly candid about the lack of vaccine durability, although he kept away from the vaccine injury topic. But regardless, Hoffman and Ehrenfeld would have him muzzled if he were a doctor for raising his frustration about the durability and breadth challenges with the current vaccines.

If we allowed authorities or their proxies to dictate truth and fiction, no one would be free to contest what in some cases appear to be exaggerated benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines, for example.

And let’s not forget that while the pharmaceutical industry is very important—our news media platform is dedicated to tracking breakthroughs that ultimately pharmaceutical companies must invest in to turn to medicines—they have been in the past entangled in horrible scandals or illicit schemes that hurt society.

We only need to point to recent incidents such as Merck and Viox or Purdue Pharma and Oxycontin. How many people became addicted to opiates because government agencies fell hook line and sinker for corporate science? When will these doctors espousing such dangerous talk realize what the implications are if you muzzle criticism? Pfizer’s revenues derived from the pandemic approach $100 billion, an unprecedented amount of money. TrialSite analyzed Public Citizen’s Pfizer’ Power, finding that the company in many cases pursued profit over people and health during the pandemic. We remind Drs. Hoffman and Ehrenfeld who ever had the gold tend to impose their will.

At the confluence of power and big money comes a tendency for corruption, and without a free and open press, which includes independent physicians making their opinions known, we could easily slip into a dark non-democratic reality.

Who is Hoffman and Ehrenfeld?

Benjamin Hoffman is the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics for 2024. He is a professor and pediatrician at both Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and Oregon Health and Science University. After studying Anthropology at UC Berkeley, he attended Medical School at Harvard University. Notably, Harvard is an epitome of an elite institution, and since 9-11, our CIA has re-upped its interest is hiring Anthropology graduates.

Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, became president of the American Medical Association in June 2023, and he was voted onto the American Medical Association Board of Trustees in 2014. Dr. Ehrenfeld is a consultant to the WHO and was co-chair of a Navy Surgeon General’s Taskforce. His work has been funded by the DoD, NIH, and others. As to academic credential, the doctor “is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Haverford College, the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health.” Last, Ehrenfeld is a combat veteran of several campaigns in Afghanistan, and for that we are grateful.

What about MedPage Today?

What about MedPage Today? The medical focused media site is owned by Everyday Health Group, which is in turn indirectly owned by J2 Global Inc., an American technology holding company based in Los Angeles, California. The company changed its name to ZiffDavis in 2021. According to Ziff Davis’s annual investor disclosure, MedPage Today is considered their flagship professional property. Ironically, the top two institutional shareholders of Ziff Davis, Blackrock and Vanguard Group, are often among the top five institutional owners in most of the largest publicly traded pharmaceutical companies.  

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/elite-doctors-support-government-censorship-in-the-name-of-public-safety-c86d6f16

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1 April, 2024

Cancelled Again: Who Controls Campus Free Speech?

Bettina Arndt

Last time I spoke at Sydney University, the riot squad had to be called in to protect my audience from the baying mob of feminist activists trying to close the speech down.

They didn’t like the fact I was speaking out about their efforts to force universities to set up kangaroo courts to adjudicate sexual assault.

Funnily enough, this kerfuffle led to the federal government calling an inquiry into free speech on campus, which ultimately led to laws that require universities to promote open discussion, rather than allow activists to determine the public discourse.

Obviously, those regulations haven’t had the intended impact because unruly students just go on their sweet way.

Earlier this month I was cancelled again—and this time by the Young Liberals, for Heaven’s sake.

What does that say about the future of the centre-right Liberal Party when they are the ones shutting down proper debate?

The University of Sydney Conservatives Club was hosting a discussion evening focussed on the Higgins rape case. I was approached three months earlier to appear on a panel, along with Chris Merritt, vice president of the Rule of Law Institute, and author Andrew Urban.

The young women organising the event did a terrific job putting together thoughtful discussion points including the use of the case for political ends, undermining of the presumption of innocence, concerns about unmeritorious cases being brought before the courts, damage to the credibility of the media, and the impact of #MeToo.

It was just perfect for setting the scene for civilised debate for a select audience—the event was promoted solely to the Conservative Club students.

Ironically, the previous event hosted by the club just two weeks earlier featured Tony Abbott and the famous UK commentator, Konstantin Kisin, who argued freedom of speech is the cornerstone of Western civilisation.

Clearly, Mr. Kisin’s important message failed to impact on the blinkered views of the president of the Young Liberals who took it upon himself to cancel me.

The week before the event, the president suddenly announced to the female students running the event they weren’t permitted to include me—apparently, Young Liberals NSW has final control over the Club’s activities.

It is interesting to note the new NSW Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic applauded the decision to ban me—to think that this woman won the seat of the late, great Jim Molan.

The Young Liberals president actually suggested that hosting an event with me could ruin the career of the art/law student who was the major organiser.

It is quite bizarre and extremely alarming that this young man, who presumably has set his sights on a career in Liberal politics, should join the ranks of the thought police.

In fact, he preferred the event not to take place at all. But the organisers stuck to their guns and decided to go ahead with the event, with my two fellow panellists to handle the discussion.

But when it comes to marketing and promoting the event, the interference came again, with demands that Ms. Higgins not be mentioned.

The promotion simply mentioned, “Lawfare in Australia,” a very bland and rather misleading presentation of the proposed discussion which was originally promoted as “Higgins Unpacked.”

In the end, the event did end up being cancelled, after the other panellists decided on principle to withdraw.

Apparently, the president was not acting off his own bat, but rather had been leant on by other senior members of the organisation. And there are many Young Libs who objected strenuously to my exclusion, so there’s dissension in the ranks, with factional issues at play.

Yet the fact remains that key Young Libs were determined that Higgins remains unpacked.

The head of the organisation failed to answer a series of questions asking him to explain the reasoning for his decision. These included my suggestion that he may subscribe to a preferred narrative regarding the Higgins case.

Heaven forbid that some of the student audience might open their minds to alternative perspectives on the issue. It just shows what a great job the Brittany Higgins cheer squad has done to shut down proper discussion around the facts of this case.

Given the biased media coverage, it will be interesting if Bruce Lehrmann wins his defamation action against the media—the outcome is to be announced on April 4.

The general public has been so misinformed about the holes in the Higgins case that many will be outraged if the judge finds the media was wrong to promote her very story.

It’s a very bad look for Young Liberals to be opposed to uncensored public discussion of the social and political implications of this critical legal case.

The conundrum faced by young conservatives was addressed by Konstantin Kisin, during his recent tour of Australia. At the end of his two-week tour, he warned that this country has been infected by the woke virus, with people afraid to speak out on any number of issues.

“While the centre left appears its extremist fringe, many on the centre-right hesitate to challenge the cultural vandalism they observe for fear of being described as ‘cultural warriors,’” he said.

Was that the fear that prompted this worrying move by the Young Liberals? They know that a thorough dissection of the Brittany Higgins saga would lead to the usual Twitter storm from the lunatic fringe who control so much of university culture.

If that was enough to lead our future Liberal leaders to cower in fear, the future of inspiring political leadership in this country looks very bleak indeed.

It’s a strange thing that this 74-year-old grandmother still has them quaking in their boots.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/cancelled-again-5616837?ea_src=au-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-opinion-australia-0-large-0

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com/ (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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