Tag: Free speech

Things the main stream press decided to hide (part 3)


2022 in review: Issues ignored version

Twitter was in contact with multiple government agencies

Federales sought action on narratives on Ukraine and COVID

The Daily Wire points out how it was not just the FBI that directed Twitter to restrict topics, ban people, publish lies, and promote the Biden position on Ukraine and COVID.

Journalist Matt Taibbi released a new installment of “The Twitter Files” Saturday afternoon that showed that the FBI was not the only government agency that was in regular contact with Twitter about content on the platform.

Taibbi said that the State Department, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency were also involved in contacting the platform about potential foreign propaganda on the platform.

Internal company emails showed that FBI agent Elvis Chan asked Twitter executives if he could invite an “OGA” — Other Government Agency — to an upcoming conference.

The email referred to a Twitter employee, whose name was redacted, and said that people from the employee’s “former employer,” which a Twitter executive acknowledged meant the CIA, were specifically inquiring about the invitation.

“The government was in constant contact not just with Twitter but with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi said. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest, and many others. Industry players also held regular meetings without government.”

The new Twitter Files release also showed that FBI officials helped put the company in contact with local law enforcement officials to deal with issues.

Taibbi said that the FBI was “clearly tailoring” its searches on the platform to look for potential content violations that Twitter could take action on.

(Read more at the Daily Wire)

Banana-republic Biden here proves he will push us into a Democrat-dictatorship

Through this article, we see Biden:

  • Restricting free speech through the proxies of Twitter and the FBI, CIA, and NSA
  • Stepping into the role of the doctor as he restricts discussion of alternate medicines (such as hydrochloroquine and other medicines) for COVID
  • Silencing his opposition (while again by proxy) through banning people from platforms
  • Allowing only his approved narrative (never mind that it was a complete fabrication)

Therefore, the next time that I go on a rant regarding the fascism of Biden, don’t stop me. It does not constitute any exaggeration.

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Breitbart names eighteen wasteful items in the $1.7 trillion spending bill

Here are the first six

Breitbart details eighteen insanely liberal projects that the $1.7 trillion splurge pushes (including further prosecution of 6 January detainees; LGBT projects; border security for Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and Oman; and more).

The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill contains millions in wasteful spending, including $575 million for “reproductive health” where population growth “threatens biodiversity,” $11 million for LGBT-related projects, and millions more for border security for other countries.

Democrats are determined to pass the $1.7 trillion spending spree prior to Christmas following the Senate advancing the spending bill on Tuesday. The omnibus hit a snag mid-week due to Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) Title 42 amendment, which lawmakers ultimately rejected.

The swamp quickly regained its footing, and the Senate passed the bill on Thursday in a 68-29 vote, despite conservatives in both chambers warning Republican colleagues to vote against the measure. Republican Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is among those who has backed the warnings of House Republicans threatening to thwart the legislative efforts of GOP senators who voted in favor of the bill.

Eighteen Republican senators ended up voting with Democrats to pass the $1.7 government spending spree.

The 4,155-page monster contains billions in earmarks and millions more on wasteful projects unrelated to keeping the government up and running.

Here are some of the highlights.

  1. The bill contains $45 billion to Ukraine. This is in addition to the $66 million given by American taxpayers earlier this year, bringing the total to $111 billion.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stated that the blank check is simply not enough:

    “We are not in an easy situation. The enemy is increasing its army. Our people are braver and need more powerful weapons,” he said about the Ukrainian war. “We will pass it on from the boys to the Congress, to the president of the United States. We are grateful for their support, but it is not enough. It is a hint — it is not enough.”

  2. The bill also designates part of D.C. as Ukrainian Independence Park and, as Breitbart News reported, “allows for signs around the park that ‘include information on the importance of the independence, freedom, and sovereignty of Ukraine and the solidarity between the people of Ukraine and the United States.’”
  3. $11 million is allotted for LGBT-themed projects. This includes $1.2 million to San Diego Community College for “centers to support LGBT students,” $3 million for the American LGBTQ+ Museum in New York City, $750,000 for the “TransLatin@ Coalition” to provide “workforce development programs and supportive services for Transgender, Gender nonconforming and Intersex (TGI) immigrant women in Los Angeles,” and $105,000 going toward what has been described as a “mentoring program for LGBT youth in the greater Pittsburg area.” Another $856,000 is allotted for an “LGBT Center” in New York as well.
  4. The bill designates tens of millions for “necessary expenses associated with the restoration of Pacific salmon populations, $65,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2024.” The words “salmon” or “salmonoid” are mentioned 48 times throughout the bill.
  5. The bill includes over half a billion, $575 million, to be used for “family planning” or “reproductive health.” This includes areas where lawmakers say population growth “threatens biodiversity.” The bill states in part, “That of the funds appropriated under title III of this Act, not less than $575,000,000 should be made available for family planning/reproductive health, including in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species.”
  6. 19 earmarks totaling $60 million are set aside for RINO Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). This includes $500,000 for the “Restoring Indigenous Safety and Empowerment (RISE) Tribal Domestic Violence Shelter for Helping Ourselves Prevent Emergencies.”

(Read more at Breitbart)

The six items I included are aggrivating. The eighteen cited by Breitbart are maddening

The six items that I list include enough idiocy to be aggrivating. The eighteen things mentioned by Breitbart could drive one to madness. However, to consider the degree of insanity inclosed in over 4,000 pages that had to be voted on within a matter of days, then a new level of craziness gets involved. Therefore, I find myself agreeing with Representative Dan Crenshaw as he uses a Townhall article to explain his vote against the $17 trillion omnibus bill.

Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw is detailing why he voted against the $1.7 trillion omnibus package on Friday, paving the way for President Joe Biden’s signature after the monster legislation was passed in the U.S. Senate. He’s also calling claims lawmakers didn’t have enough time to read the legislation an “excuse” for voting against it, arguing there are much better reasons why the bill should have been opposed. 



(Read more at Townhall)

Hence, I agree with Representative Crenshaw for this time and thank him for his “no” vote.

…

 

Liberal repression of the news (continued)


Biden’s social media defunds another company

Why has PayPal cancelled the Free Speech Union?

Britain’s Spectator allows an op-ed commentary on PayPal’s cancelation of the account of the Free Speech Union.

I thought one of the benefits of being cancelled – I lost five positions in quick succession at the beginning of 2018 – is that it immunises you from being cancelled again. After all, what more dirt could be thrown at me? The offence archaeologists did such a thorough job four years ago, sifting through everything I’d said or written dating back to 1987, that there was nothing left to dig up. But it turns out that was naive. Last week I got cancelled again.

The instrument of my downfall was PayPal, the technology company that supports online money transfers and operates as a payment processor for online businesses, auction sites and so on. At around 2 p.m. last Thursday I received an email from PayPal informing me that the company was ‘initiating closure’ of my personal account because I was ‘in violation’ of its ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. I looked up that policy and it covers a multitude of sins, but no clue was offered as to which one I’d committed. ‘If you have money in your PayPal balance, we’ll hold it for up to 180 days,’ it said. That was a bit annoying because I have over £600 in the account, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I mainly use it for receiving payments from European magazines I write for occasionally.

Then it got serious. Within a few minutes of contacting me, PayPal sent the same message to the Daily Sceptic, the news publishing website I’ve been running for two-and-a-half years, and the Free Speech Union, the organisation I set up in 2020 to defend people threatened with cancellation. In both cases, PayPal was shutting down the accounts for the same reason – breaching the Acceptable Use Policy. No further details. To give you a sense of how serious this is, about a quarter of the Daily Sceptic’s donor revenue is processed by PayPal and about a third of the Free Speech Union’s 9,500 members pay their dues via PayPal.

‘So what?’ you might think. Just email all those people and advise them to use a different payment processor. I’ll do that, obviously, but it’s inevitable that some won’t bother – some of them won’t even open the emails – and the resulting loss of revenue will be hugely disruptive. The Daily Sceptic has four people on the payroll and the Free Speech Union has 15 and they both operate on tight margins. I was relying on PayPal to deliver the service it promised to perform when I first signed up and which I’ve been paying for until now (1.5 per cent commission on every transaction). I had no idea it could just whisk the rug out from under you, with no notice and without having to provide any proper explanation. In my case, the excuse offered was obviously bogus. How could all three accounts be guilty of ‘violating’ the same policy within minutes of each other?

(Read more of the travails of being deplatformed from the Spectator)

From this, we know that this struggle has a global nature

This does not exist as a struggle between Democrats and Republicans. More possibly, it might consist of a struggle between socialists and freedom-minded people. It might also remain as a fight between the big-government people and the individualists. 

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Biden’s election handlers seem to be up to their old tricks

Democrats “charity” voter-registration scheme

The Wall Street Journal shares an Op-Ed that points toward a nefarious bent within Democrat circles.

Senate Democrats plan to pass the Disclose Act, a bill they claim would force “dark money” groups into the light. Never mind the darkness that envelops their own epic voter-registration scam.

A New York Times article this week confirmed a political reality that Republicans have been slow to publicize: Democrats are openly abusing charities to stack voter rolls in their favor. The Times story was ostensibly about “voter registration” groups worried that donors weren’t giving enough to “democracy-related” programs this midterm cycle. Read closely and you notice the story is entirely about Democrats, confirming a longstanding scheme by which foundations and private donors funnel tax-exempt dollars into “charities” that microtarget and register Democratic voters.

(Read more at the Wall Street Journal)

And, according to Joe, we can trust Democrats to not cheat again

And who wouldn’t trust this crew when they have failed at everything, but continue to do nothing but blame the other side?

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Biden’s FBI goes full Gestapo against pro-life speaker

FBI raids home of Catholic pro-life speaker and author with guns drawn as his terrified kids watch

Lifesitenews reports that a Catholic speaker was raided by the FBI with guns drawn in front of the speaker’s children.

A well-known pro-life author, sidewalk counselor, and father of seven was the latest victim of a U.S. Department of Justice-sponsored SWAT raid and arrest — for supposed “FACE Act” violations — at his rural home as his children looked on “screaming.”

Mark Houck is the founder and president of The King’s Men, which promotes healing for victims of pornography addiction and promotes Christian virtues among men in the United States and Europe.

According to his wife Ryan-Marie, who spoke with LifeSiteNews, he also drives two hours south to Philadelphia every Wednesday to sidewalk counsel for six to eight hours at two different abortion centers.

Ryan-Marie, who is a homeschooling mother, described how the SWAT team of 25 to 30 FBI agents swarmed their property with around 15 vehicles at 7:05 a.m. this morning. Having quickly surrounded the house with rifles in firing position, “they started pounding on the door and yelling for us to open it.”

Before opening the door, she explained, her husband tried to calm them, saying, “‘Please, I’m going to open the door, but, please, my children are in the home. I have seven babies in the house.’ But they just kept pounding and screaming,” she said.

When he opened the door, “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” Ryan-Marie described.

When they came in, they ordered the kids to stay upstairs. “Our staircase is open, so [the kids] were all at the top of the stairs which faces the front door, and I was on the stairs as well, coming down.”

“The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” she explained.

After asking them why they were at the house, the agents said they were there to arrest Mark. When Ryan-Marie asked for their warrant, “they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not.”

(Read the full story at Lifesitenews)

Aren’t you glad we have the “Great Unifier” in charge?

Aren’t you glad that devoutly-Catholic Joe is in charge of the FBI?

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An admission by a member of the press on media bias

A liberal reporter claims Republicans shouldn’t have a say on any issue

Townhall comments on the words of a CNN news reader who said the quiet part of silencing Republicans out loud.

Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones is fretting over CNN’s makeover of distancing itself from being an extreme left-leading outlet. 

Titled “CNN ‘hewing toward the center’ is not necessarily good for our democracy,” Jones fret that the network’s attempt of being less polarizing could be dangerous to the country. 

Jones also claimed that “the other side shouldn’t be given a voice” on certain topics, especially when it comes to former President Trump.

His piece bashed a recent story in the Chicago Tribune which touched on CNN’s move to becoming less polarizing amid its new CEO Chris Licht stepping in. 

The Chicago paper boldly stated that most issues have two sides, however when it comes “to the antics of former President Donald Trump,” the Right shouldn’t be allowed to report on it. 

“Here’s the problem: All Americans aren’t reasonable enough or willing to accept what’s true… and it isn’t just a small minority of those who aren’t willing to accept things such as the 2020 presidential election, the authenticity of our elections and other bedrocks of our democracy. For the editorial board to wrap up the issue by briefly mentioning the ‘antics of former President Donald Trump’ seems overly dismissive and not nearly as comprehensive of what’s truly at stake here,” Jones said. 

“Perhaps it’s Pollyannaish to hope that CNN can retrofit itself in a country where each political side believes the other is living in a kind of dangerous alternate reality,” according to the Tribune. 

(Read at Townhall to get several paragraphs of excuses for this bias)

This shouts “Don’t trust Democrats in the press” as loud as anything

That is, this is the loudest shout from the Democrat press to ignore them since they tried to bury the Hunter laptop.

…

Democrat media outlets now deny previous “fact checks”

The Washington Post botches a fact-check to cover for Democrats’ abortion extremism

The Washington Examiner exposes the poor job done in “fact checking” done by liberal outlets like the Washington Post who now have lowered their standards to the level where they deny having previously “fact checked” for Democrats.

So often, the “fact-checking” industry in the establishment media serves as an organ of the Democratic Party.

Even then, the Washington Post may have made it a bit too obvious.

Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post decided to fact-check claims by Republicans that Democrats support abortion “until the moment of birth,” citing comments from both Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, who used that phrase. It’s not a particularly difficult fact to check, given that Democrats do support keeping abortion legal at any point in pregnancy and frequently decline or refuse to name a single abortion restriction they would ever support.

But Kessler decided instead to fact-check a claim that was never made.

Kessler says that the “GOP attacks are disingenuous at best” because “they imply that late-term abortions are common.” He then proceeds to “fact check” how many late-term abortions are performed in the United States. In his verdict, Kessler concludes, “The campaign rhetoric suggests such late-term abortions happen frequently. The truth is that they do not.”

But again, this is the claim he was supposedly “fact-checking.” Kessler fabricated a strawman claim to give him an article that is more favorable to Democrats. He knows that Democrats oppose all abortion restrictions — everyone knows it because they keep saying so — and their stance is out-of-touch with most people’s views on the issue. So he decided to make the issue about the frequency of late-term abortions, which he concludes is at least 10,000 per year.

Speaking of which, that 10,000-a-year number also gives the lie to the claim that late-term abortion is “extremely rare.” It is much more common, for example, than deaths from AR-15s or other so-called “assault weapons.” All rifles combined, AR-15s included, accounted for only 364 gun homicides in 2019. (There were 10,258 total gun homicides in 2019, which is almost as many late-term abortions as Kessler decided are “extremely rare.”)

According to the Washington Post’s own police shooting database, there have been 7,768 people shot and killed by police since 2015. That hasn’t stopped the Democrats and their allies in the media from claiming that it is an epidemic. The Black Lives Matter movement is given national reverence by liberals, including Kessler’s paper, even though only 1,689 of those victims were black and, of that group, only 144 in the last eight years were unarmed. So police misconduct and shootings with so-called “assault weapons” are both considerably rarer than late-term abortions, which Kessler declared “extremely rare” at 10,000 per year.

Would Kessler ever claim that Democrats are out of line on gun control or police shootings? Of course, he wouldn’t. Today’s Democratic Party is essentially a political arm of the legacy media corporations.

(Read at Washington Examiner how this type of bias would not be tolerated against the left)

If the main stream press does not want to be seen as just an arm of the Democrat party, why do this?

Why make abortion the focus when the real story is a failing president? Then why pull the focus from abortion when Democrats’ radical stance becomes so evident?

…

More news that the main stream media doesn’t tell: promotion of LGBTQ+ agenda items

Hilliard City School District promotes an “LGBTQ+ resource guide” with instructions on sex work and abortions

The Washington Free Beacon provides a case where liberals provided minors with information on getting abortions and working in the sex industry (sounds like multiple counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor to me).

Teachers in an Ohio school district are wearing name badges that students can scan with their phones to access an “LGBTQ+ resource guide,” which includes instructions on how to get abortions and “organize like a sex worker.”

Hilliard City School District participates in the National Education Association’s “I’m Here” program, which encourages teachers to wear the badge. The group says the program is supposed to educate teachers on how to respond to LGBT students. But a Washington Free Beacon review found that the QR code takes students to resources that describe abortion as the removal of “pregnancy tissue,” encourage gender transitioning without parental consent, and promote sex work.

Public schools around the country are coming under fire for teaching age-inappropriate lessons to students. Parents in Idaho, for example, caught the state government this month offering “porn literacy” to students. A parent sued a Maine school district for offering books with “sexually graphic material, including descriptions of queer sex,” the Free Beacon reported in July.

The teachers’ badges have sparked outrage among parents in Hilliard City, ABC 6 reported earlier this month.

“The badge has a QR code that once scanned takes you to a website that has extremely inappropriate information, and as a parent that crosses the line,” Hilliard City parent Lisa Chaffee said.

Hilliard City superintendent Dave Stewart said the badges only concern “adult learning,” though the website from the QR code provides resources aimed at K-12 students. After backlash from parents, the district advised teachers to cover the QR code on the back of the badge, according to a statement from Stewart.

One link from the online guide encourages children to seek LGBT resources without their parents’ approval.

(Read at the Washington Free Beacon about the links concerning protections in Texas for LGBT issues)

So, what holds a more important place in your heart than children? With that answered, why doesn’t the press report on this?

If the press really wants to grab our attention, why not show how the LGBTQ+ community has targeted our children through liberal teachers?

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One more exchange that would have been repeated daily had the liberal/conservative or male/female or race roles been reversed

John Kennedy spends over four minutes clarifying points that a nominee would rather obscure

In the following video taken from the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on 7 September 2022, Senator John Kennedy illustrates how people who sign a document should know what they sign. That is, because a judicial nominee had co-written a document titled “Mandate for Change,” maybe she should not be so surprised she now finds herself denying what the publication advocated.

…

 

The new tactic of the Left is to not define terms


Proposed laws in California and Maryland open the possibility of “post-birth abortion” under the undefined label of “perinatal death”

LifeNews reports on an often-denied provision of a California law currently under consideration.

California policymakers who make up the “Future of Abortion Council” just dropped a bombshell. They intend to not only codify the killing of unborn children throughout all nine months of pregnancy but to decriminalize killing newborns days or even weeks after birth.

New language added to AB 2223 last week revealed the disturbing intent. The proposed legislation would shield a mother from civil and criminal charges for any “actions or omissions” related to her pregnancy, “including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.” Although definitions of “perinatal death” vary, all of them include the demise of newborns seven days or more after birth.

The bill from Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks additionally protects anyone who “aids or assists a pregnant person in exercising” these rights. It also allows a woman to sue any police department or legal authority which arrests or charges her for hurting or killing her child under provisions of the bill.

“For years, pro-life advocates have argued there is no moral difference between ending a child’s life days before birth or days after birth. California’s pro-abortion legislators now seemingly agree,” said Jonathan Keller, President of California Family Council. “A political culture that justifies killing millions of children in the womb is now declaring open season on unwanted newborns. Every Californian must oppose this heinous bill.”

Governor Newsom formed the “Future of Abortion Council” last year in an effort to turn California into a “sanctuary state” for the procedure. Organizers listed AB 2223 as part of their legislation package implementing a 45-point plan to “expand and protect access” to abortion in California.

(Read more at LifeNews for a discussion of the Maryland law explored below and the Northam foible)

Oddly, this term seems to be popping up out of the blue

Just like most of us had not heard of “transgender” or “cis” before 2015, this new focus on perinatal death seems to be the new push of the Left.

…

Maryland “Pregnant Persons” bill seeks to decriminalize infanticide

TownHall lays out the facts of a proposed Maryland law being pushed by Democrats in their legislature.

A new set of bills under consideration in the Maryland House and Senate are raising eyebrows for what they would change in the law concerning mothers who abandon their newborns to die either because they no longer want the child or are unable to care for their baby. 

Maryland Senate Bill 669 and House Bill 626, dubbed the “Pregnant Person’s Freedom Act of 2022,” not only erase women by adopting the left’s gender-confused newspeak that ludicrously assumes men can get pregnant but, as the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) explained in its analysis of the legislation, “the bill also proposes a revision of the fetal murder/manslaughter statute that would serve to handcuff the investigation of infant deaths unrelated to abortion.”

In other words – this bill will effectively legalize infanticide. The exact language of the bill states: “This section may not be construed to authorize any form of investigation or penalty for a person . . . experiencing a . . . perinatal death related to a failure to act.” (Emphasis added). In other words, a baby born alive and well could be abandoned and left to starve or freeze to death, and nothing could be done to punish those who participated in that cruel death. The bill also includes a section that would allow “a person [to] bring a cause of action for damages if the person was subject to unlawful arrest or criminal investigation for a violation of this section as a result of . . . experiencing a . . . perinatal death.

As the ACLJ — which is preparing to testify against the bill — also notes, “Because the language that is used is without clear definition, the bill could prevent any investigations into the death of infants at least seven days AFTER their birth, and may extend to infants as old as four weeks!” under the medical definition of “perinatal” that ranges from 7 to 28 days.

(Read of the non-lethal options available in Maryland at TownHall)

Do not define terms, but do go back to their standard catch phrases

During the pandemic, “My body, my choice” was seen as an attack on the health of Democrat Karens and Kens. However, now liberals wave that slogan on signs outside the Supreme Court and shout it for hours.

During the pandemic, healthcare was seen as an act of giving in to the collective and submitting to mandated shots that ended in the deaths of many. Now, “healthcare” means a procedure that ends with the death of at least one human (if not all involved).

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Shut Up, the Disinformation Governance Board explained

The Wall Street Journal illustrates through a 2 May 2022 opinion piece how little anyone knows about the Disinformation Governance Board (because nothing has been defined). (The bolding below is mine, placed to create emphasis.)

It’s always exciting for progressives when they create a new government office of something or other. They live for this: another excuse to spend piles of taxpayer dollars; another polysyllabic title and flashy logo; another opportunity to extend the long, comforting arm of the bureaucracy into the business of ordinary citizens who never knew how impoverished their lives were without it.

So there was a tangible buzz of excitement around Washington last week when the Department of Homeland Security proudly inaugurated the Disinformation Governance Board.

Other than its title and the identity of its executive director, there’s not much we know about this exciting-sounding new body. Its job, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a congressional committee last week, is to tackle falsehoods that threaten the national security of the U.S. He made it sound over the weekend as though it is all about preventing human traffickers and smugglers from misrepresenting themselves—all harmless enough.

But we also learned last week that it will be headed by Nina Jankowicz. Her Twitter feed makes her look like a cross between Madame Mao and Bette Midler—a mix of impeccably conformist left-wing views about politics and media misinformation—the Hunter Biden story was Russian disinformation, the Steele Dossier was all true, etc.—with excruciating political parodies of musical-theater numbers. Watching her videos is a little like being an audience member at a Christmas concert in a prisoner-of-war camp.

(Read of the Wall Street Journal‘s apt acronym for these liberals)

It seems that they figure “If we don’t tell them, we can do anything”

It seems that the Democrats have determined that, as long as they do not inform the public, they can break any law and infringe on any right they want to stifle.

Considering how the 6 January protesters are being treated, they may be right.

…

 

On the tech giants in Joe Biden’s America


Texas passes SB12, much to the consternation of liberals who want to continue to silence conservatives on social media

Texas moves to protect conservatives from tech giant viewpoint discrimination

The Texas Public Policy Action informs us of Texas SB 12, which would stop companies like Facebook and Twitter from blocking posts based on a political viewpoint.

Austin-CapitalSB 12 would prevent social media platforms with more than 100 million users in a calendar month from censoring a person’s viewpoint expressed in a social media post but would not prohibit the censoring of content that is prohibited, such as violent or overtly sexual content or in cases where federal law specifically allows websites and services to censor speech. This applies to Texas residents, users who do business in Texas and users who receive or share content on a social media platform in Texas.

SB 12 would require social media platforms to publicly disclose on their website and in a way easily accessible to the public, accurate information regarding its content management, data management, and business practices, including specific information regarding how they use, place, and target content and services.

Requires social media platforms to publish an acceptable use policy informing users of acceptable content, explaining the steps the social media platform will take to ensure content complies with the policy, and explains the means by which users can notify the platform of content that potentially violates the policy.

Requires social media platforms to publish a quarterly transparency report of the number of times they were alerted to illegal content or activity and their response. Provides process by which users can file complaint about content being removed and the responsibilities of the platform in rectifying the complaint.

The Attorney General may sue a social media platform for violating these terms.

(Read why Texas Public Policy Action supports SB12 at Texas Public Policy Action)

Reason.com points to possible flaws of Texas SB12 — all based on federalism

In their review of Texas SB12, Reason.com points out some flaws in Texas SB12:

Political bias on social media is one of the biggest issues animating the political right these days, and thus many conservatives talk about doing something to prevent “Big Tech” censorship. Several Republican-controlled states are considering passing legislation designed to accomplish just that.

The Texas Senate, for instance, is poised to approve SB12, which ostensibly prohibits social media companies from restricting their users’ speech.

“We need to recognize in Texas, maybe particularly in Texas, we see that the First Amendment is under assault by the social media companies and that is not going to be tolerated in Texas,” said Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in support of the bill.

The First Amendment is not under assault by social media companies. On the contrary, the First Amendment defends the free speech rights of private entities—like social media companies—against restrictive government action, like this bill. It would be more accurate to say that the First Amendment is under assault by the Texas legislature. A private company deciding what kind of speech it allows on its platform is precisely the kind of thing the First Amendment protects from government interference.

If that were not enough, the bill has two massive flaws, one of which might render it entirely pointless.

First, the bill defines its terms very broadly: It would prohibit any large social media company (more than 100 million monthly users) from restricting content because of the expressed viewpoint. “An interactive computer service may not censor a user, a user’s expression, or a user’s ability to receive the expression of another person,” the bill reads.

Practically speaking, this could prohibit Facebook and Twitter from taking action against content that is harmful, abusive, or spammy. Facebook’s News Feed algorithm makes choices about what kind of content to prioritize, and the platform occasionally opts to limit the reach of some posts—conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, or COVID-19, for instance. The bill would appear to interfere with the day-to-day runnings of the site in very basic ways. It could even force social media sites to take away moderation options from users.

“YouTube and Facebook allow page managers to remove content posted on their community pages,” noted Steve DelBianco, president of the trade association NetChoice, in his comments about the bill. “This empowers content creators to curate their pages to suit community interests. However, platforms and websites might remove this capability, since it invites expensive litigation under SB 12.”

If that weren’t good enough reason to oppose the bill, it also contains a section that appears to render the entire thing obsolete: “This chapter does not prohibit an interactive computer service from censoring expression that the interactive computer service is specifically authorized to censor by federal law.”

Under a federal law known as Section 230, social media companies cannot be held liable for “any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” In other words, federal law already gives social media companies every right to restrict users’ content, and Texas’ bill—as written—bows to federal law.

(Read more at Reason.com)

Maybe it is time for states to start asserting their preeminence over the federal government. It was the states that created the federal government (not the other way around).

With all due deference to President Lincoln, we in Texas don’t like running a liberal ship into the ground — and that is just what New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. seem intent on doing. Therefore, we conservative states need to chart another course and dare the demented people up North to try to hold us down.

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Mike Lindell touts a new social media platform that will handle over a billion users

The Epoch Times reports that Mike Lindell, CEO and founder of MyPillow, has announced the formation of a social media platform.

mike-lindell

The forthcoming social media website from MyPillow’s Mike Lindell will be able to handle more than a billion users, Lindell said this week.

“I believe it will handle upwards of a billion. If it doesn’t, we will get to that capacity. I don’t think that’s exaggerated, by any means,” Lindell told The Epoch Times.

“It’s going to be the safest, secure platform. I built it expecting to be attacked.”

The platform, dubbed Frank, has a landing page but isn’t operational yet.

Lindell told The Epoch Times’ affiliate NTD on March 11 that the website would be up and running within two weeks.

The current plan is to launch as soon as April 5, but no later than April 12.

“The only reason for the delay is, I actually added six more servers in another location. I really want redundancy, so I’ve got three different U.S. locations and another hidden one. So I’ve got—if anybody went out there to physically damage my stuff, I wanted a fourth location, so that was very important to me,” Lindell told The Epoch Times.

Frank is described as a mix of YouTube and Twitter. The core idea is free speech, according to Lindell, who was banned by Twitter in January for violations of the platform’s Civic Integrity Policy and has said he’s been harmed by actions from Google.

(Read more at The Epoch Times)

This allows us the opportunity to use our feet to vote rather than using the change of law

Just like when I moved to Parler, I will move to both Mike Lindell’s and President Trump’s new platforms. However, I think that (instead of using these platforms as supplements to Facebook and Twitter — the latter of which cut my followership by thousands before I quit) I will use these primarily.

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Just to mock Facebook and Instagram, here is the Trump interview those platforms banned in Joe Biden’s America

Here is the video banned by Instagram and Facebook

The following video is available in its entirety on Rumble.

Not only does the NYT buy ink by the barrel, they buy politicians

Corporate media legislation is “bait and switch to strangle conservative outlets”

Breitbart quotes Ken Blackwell as he outlines how the corporate media has worked with Democrat leaders to craft legislation that will drive out the competition.

Former Ohio state treasurer and secretary of state Ken Blackwell described a bill backed by corporate media giants currently making its way through Congress as “a bait-and-switch attempt that claims to help conservative news sources but would instead purge them from the marketplace of ideas.”

Blackwell took aim at the proposed legislation, known as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act of 2019 (JCPA), in an op-ed in the American Thinker.

As Breitbart News’s Allum Bokhari reported, the JCPA is deceptively titled because instead of promoting “competition,” the bill in its current form would “cement the advantage of the establishment and corporate media at the expense of its competitors” by giving “Big Media companies a special exemption from antitrust law, allowing them to form a cartel that would, under normal circumstances, be illegal to create.”

“Furthermore, there is nothing in the bill that would prevent the bigger media companies from excluding smaller companies from the cartel,” Bokhari added. “If passed, there would be nothing to stop the formation of a cartel that includes CNN, NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other big companies, while excluding smaller competitors in the independent media — not to mention local newspapers. Such a cartel would secure favorable rates for the former while leaving the latter in the dust.”

Blackwell’s op-ed offers similar criticism of the bill. He explains that it would not only grant big media companies an exemption from federal antitrust laws, but it would also allow them to “operate in a coordinated fashion to negotiate prices that social media companies like Facebook would have to pay them to carry their content. It would ensure that these tech billionaires would have to direct some of their riches into content providers.”

“But that’s a Big Boys’ game, where the major players could decide whom to let into their club. Smaller outlets would be left out in the cold, and the market would suffer,” Blackwell writes.

(Read three central paragraphs of Blackwell quote at Breitbart)

America needs to remain a country where the little guy can thrive

Oddly, under the Democrat socialist politicians, America is becoming a nation of Nazi-eque melding of big business and government.

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Free speech, online forums (especially Twitter), and Biden’s America


California man sues Twitter, AOC over ‘pain and suffering’ caused by Trump ban

The New York Post provides a 15 January 2021 article that cites a suit brought by a California man against Twitter.

TwitsThe notoriously litigious, self-described California sex addict best known for suing Twitch over masturbation injuries allegedly caused by the video streaming platform’s “scantily clad gamers” has a new target — this time filing a lawsuit against Twitter, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar over the “overbearing pain and suffering” caused by the social media giant’s ban of President Trump.

In an 11-page legal document filed Tuesday in the Northern District of California, Erik Estavillo argues that he is entitled to $88.7 million in compensation, the reinstatement of Trump’s account and a retaliatory ban of both AOC and Omar, who he says use the platform to “promote eastern communist philosophies.”

Estavillo, who is representing himself in the case, claims in the filing to have run for Congress himself last year and says that due to a variety of ailments — which include depression, agoraphobia, Crohn’s disease and OCD — he has “no friends” and relies on social media as his only way of participating in political discourse.

“The Americans with Disabilities Act should protect him from such egregious behavior on the part of Twitter,” according to the lawsuit. “He has nowhere else to voice his first amendment rights to free speech.”

The crux of his legal claim appears to center around the idea that being on Twitter is comparable to living in a “company town,” such as Pullman, Illinois, or Hershey, Pennsylvania, that he physically cannot leave. The suit cites case law from the 1946 ruling in Marsh v. Alabama.

In an exclusive statement to The Post, Estavillo said he is a Democrat and supported Bernie Sanders in last year’s primary election, but sees this lawsuit as a way to protect the American people’s First Amendment rights online.

“We are not China and we shouldn’t aspire to be,” he said. “Let’s do what’s right so we can all sleep well at the end of the day.”

Estavillo also says he’s planning to file more lawsuits against other social media companies that have since given Trump the boot.

On the flipside, the lawsuit also argues that AOC and Omar’s incendiary posting style and public personas have damaged his “psyche” — and that they should be banned from the platform as a result.

Among the many claims meant to demonstrate why the pair of “Squad” members should have their accounts purged, Estavillo appears to contend that one reason is AOC’s reluctance to date him.

“AOC even has a white boyfriend but would never think of dating a Mexican like the plaintiff,” the suit reads. “They’re hypocrites.”

Estavillo says that line was simply meant to “highlight that I believe not everyone is who they say they are.”

He also notes that in a recent Twitch appearance, Omar’s computer system appeared “highly expensive,” something that “most poor and disenfranchised people can’t afford, even before the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Representatives for Ocasio-Cortez and Omar did not immediately respond to a request for comment — though Omar tweeted Tuesday, “Bless their heart” in response to news of the suit. A spokesperson for Twitter told The Post the company had “no comment at this time.”

(Read more at the New York Post)

Lawsuits like these would only be entered in California

Surely no self-respecting Texan would bother to enter such a lawsuit. This only makes light of the situations faced by other (more challenged) Twitter users.

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Child sex abuse survivor sues Twitter for refusing to remove child porn images of him

Life Site News reports on a lawsuit brought by a child sex abuse survivor (now 16) against Twitter for publishing porn images of him on its platform.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center (NCOSE), The Haba Law Firm, and The Matiasic Firm jointly filed a federal lawsuit against Twitter on behalf of a minor who was trafficked on the social media platform that boasts more than 330 million users.

The plaintiff, John Doe, a minor, was harmed by Twitter’s distribution of material depicting his sexual abuse and by Twitter’s knowing refusal to remove the images of his sexual abuse (child pornography) when notified by the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s parents. The case, John Doe v. Twitter, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

At age 16, Plaintiff John Doe was horrified to find out sexually graphic videos of himself — made at age 13 under duress by sex traffickers — had been posted to Twitter. Both John Doe and his mother, Jane Doe, contacted the authorities and Twitter. Using Twitter’s reporting system, which according to its policies is designed to catch and stop illegal material like child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from being distributed, the Doe family verified that John Doe was a minor and the videos needed to be taken down immediately.

“As John Doe’s situation makes clear, Twitter is not committed to removing child sex abuse material from its platform. Even worse, Twitter contributes to and profits from the sexual exploitation of countless individuals because of its harmful practices and platform design,” said Peter Gentala, senior legal counsel for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center. “Despite its public expressions to the contrary, Twitter is swarming with uploaded child pornography and Twitter management does little or nothing to prevent it.”

Instead of the videos being removed, Twitter did nothing, even reporting back to John Doe that the video in question did not in fact violate any of their policies. This lack of care and proper attention resulted in the CSAM of John Doe accumulating more than 167,000 views before direct involvement from a law enforcement officer caused Twitter to remove the child pornography material. John Doe is now suing Twitter for its involvement in and profiting from his sexual exploitation, which violates the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and various other protections afforded by law.

“All of these views could have been prevented by Twitter, but it inexplicably refused to remove Doe’s videos despite clear proof that he is a minor. No child or parent should have to endure this egregious violation of their rights by a technology company,” said Lisa Haba, partner at The Haba Law Firm.

“Twitter clearly needs to properly address the egregious issues of exploitation and abuse happening throughout its platform. We hope that John Doe receives some measure of justice and that this lawsuit will pave the way for other survivors to seek justice,” Gentala said.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center offers survivors of pornography-related abuse a way to seek justice.

(Read more at Life Site News)

I do not care what community Twitter considers itself a member of, circulating child porn is not acceptable

The top brass at Twitter need to be held accountable for this. They need to see the inside of a prison cell with a “child molester” sign around their neck.

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British Columbia billionaire is given the green light to sue Twitter over ‘Pizzagate’ tweets

The CBC tells us how Canadian courts have opened the floodgates for British Columbian citizens to sue Twitter.

FrankGiustraWest Vancouver billionaire Frank Giustra has been given the go-ahead to sue Twitter in a B.C. courtroom over the social media giant’s publication of a series of tweets tying him to baseless conspiracy theories involving pedophile rings and Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In a ruling released Thursday, Justice Elliott Myers found that Giustra’s history and presence in British Columbia, combined with the possibility the tweets may have been seen by as many as 500,000 B.C. Twitter users, meant a B.C. court should have jurisdiction over the case.

It’s a victory not only for Giustra — whose philanthropic activities have earned him membership in both the Orders of Canada and B.C. — but for Canadian plaintiffs trying to hold U.S.-based internet platforms responsible for border-crossing content.

‘I believe that words do matter’

In a statement, Giustra said he was looking forward to pursuing the case in the province where he built his reputation as the founder of Lionsgate Entertainment.

“I hope this lawsuit will help raise public awareness of the real harm to society if social media platforms are not held responsible for the content posted and published on their sites,” Giustra said.

“I believe that words do matter, and recent events have demonstrated that hate speech can incite violence with deadly consequences.”

Giustra filed the defamation lawsuit in April 2019, seeking an order to force Twitter to remove tweets he claimed painted him as “corrupt” and “criminal.”

He claimed he was targeted by a group who vilified him “for political purposes” in relation to the 2016 U.S. election and his work in support of the Clinton Foundation.

The online attacks allegedly included death threats and links to “pizzagate” — a “false, discredited and malicious conspiracy theory in which [Giustra] was labelled as a ‘pedophile,'” the claim stated.

Thorny questions

Twitter has not filed a response to Giustra’s claim itself — applying instead to have the case tossed because of jurisdiction.

The California-based company said it does not do business in B.C. and that Giustra was only relying on his B.C. roots to file the case in Canada because it would be a non-starter in the U.S., where the First Amendment protects free speech.

The company claimed he would have been mostly affected in the U.S. where he spends much of his time, owns extensive property and has substantial interests in the entertainment industry — meaning B.C. is only tangentially connected to the matter.

In essence, Myers said, Twitter claimed it was only a platform for others to post comment, and couldn’t be expected to face defamation cases every place people felt aggrieved.

The judge said the case presented some difficult — if timely — questions.

“This case illustrates the jurisdictional difficulties with internet defamation where the publication of the defamatory comments takes place in multiple countries where the plaintiff has a reputation to protect,” Myers wrote.

“The presumption is that a defendant should be sued in only one jurisdiction for an alleged wrong, but that is not a simple goal to achieve fairly for internet defamation.”

‘Strong ties to the province’

Myers found Giustra’s connection to B.C. undeniable.

“There can be no dispute that Mr. Giustra has a significant reputation in British Columbia. He also has strong ties to the province,” he wrote.

“The fact that he has a reputation in or connections to other jurisdictions does not detract from that.”

The judge said Giustra had also done what he needed to do to show his reputation in B.C. might have been affected.

(Read more at the CBC)

In the U.S., the courts have had a habit of protecting Twitter

Earlier, courts tossed out suits (one by Mac Isaac, the computer shop owner associated with the Hunter Biden laptop and another by Representative Nunes) against Twitter.

Hopefully, this will start a reversal of fortunes for the woke corporation.

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Parler sues Amazon for kicking it off the Internet

The Verge reports on a lawsuit brought by a Parler against Amazon for kicking it off of the Internet.

ParlerThe creators of social network Parler have sued Amazon for ending a web hosting agreement after last week’s riot at the US Capitol. Parler claims Amazon Web Services severed ties to stop Parler from competing with the larger social platform Twitter, and it’s asking a court to stop Amazon from shutting down its account — arguing that an extended shutdown would be like “pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support.”

Parler bills itself as a more permissive alternative to Facebook and Twitter, particularly as those sites have cracked down on President Donald Trump and his supporters for seeking to violently overturn the US election results. That stance has earned backlash from digital infrastructure companies. Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their stores, limiting its reach. Amazon dealt an even more fatal blow when it kicked Parler off AWS, taking the site down altogether.

The lawsuit sheds some light on Amazon’s rationale for banning Parler. In an email, Amazon’s moderation team says it is “troubled” by repeated policy violations. The email cites 98 posts that incite violence. It includes screenshots of a call to hang “traitors,” as well as an exhortation to “start systematicly assasinating [sic]” liberal leaders, supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, and others in January — with a note that “I already have a news worthy event planned.” Amazon said publicly that it “cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others.”

AWS is the world’s largest cloud service provider, controlling approximately one-third of the market, followed by competitors like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Parler argues that getting kicked off AWS was a “death knell” for the site, since it’s been unable to find another host. And it claims Amazon made the call to protect Twitter, since the two companies signed a multiyear deal for web services last year. It also says it was banned because of “political animus.”

Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union have questioned the power of infrastructure providers to suppress speech online. “It’s understandable that no company would want to be associated with the repellant speech that is now rampant,” ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told New York Times reporter Davey Alba. Nonetheless, “there will be times when large majorities of people want to repel speech that is genuinely important. So I think we should encourage, in a broad sense, companies like Amazon to embrace neutrality principles.”

As a private company, however, Amazon has broad legal latitude to cut off customers. It’s also not necessarily responsible for Parler’s difficulty in finding a new host. While the suit says AWS’s public statements about moderation have “made Parler a pariah,” activists were already pressuring companies to cut ties with the site.

An Amazon spokesperson told The Verge that there was “no merit” to the suit’s claims. “AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we respect Parler’s right to determine for itself what content it will allow. However, it is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service,” said the spokesperson. “We made our concerns known to Parler over a number of weeks and during that time we saw a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to our suspension of their services Sunday evening.”

Parler’s lawsuit echoes a similar complaint by Gab, another social network favored by far-right figures. Gab sued Google in 2017 for kicking it off the Play Store, claiming it amounted to anti-competitive behavior. However, it dropped the suit after Google allowed it to resubmit the app for review.

(Go to The Verge for the papers detailing the suit against Amazon)

Since Parler should have been protected by Section 230, the deplatforming of Parler should be reason enough for Republicans to fix the Twitter/Google/Facebook/Instagram situation once they regain power

If Google Play Store and Apple Play Store can insist that Parler impose leftist censoring or lose their spot in their stores, that sounds like the collusion of a cartel. If Google and Apple can get with Amazon and remove Parler from the Internet, it seems they used their government-like power (derived by being given access directly from the U.S. government then in charge of the Internet) to deny a free-speech forum access to the Internet.

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Poland: The center of online free speech

Breitbart points out how Poland might become the center of online free speech.

Poland'sFreedomActAgainstBigTechCensorshipPoland’s new Freedom Act against Big Tech censorship will see members of the public automatically notified of “shadowbans” and empowered to overturn restrictions if their speech online is lawful.

Speaking exclusively to Breitbart News, Deputy Minister of Justice Sebastian Kaleta, who is spearheading the new legislation, confirmed that “every time an algorithm is used to limit reach, the user will be informed if and why his reach is being limited.”

The Polish government has previously confirmed that its new laws against tech censorship will give Polish citizens a statutory right to appeal against bans and content removal if their speech was lawful under the Polish constitution, with a new Free Speech Board able to order tech firms to restore removed accounts and content on pain of huge fines.

Some tech censorship is more insidious, however, with Silicon Valley drastically curtailing some users’ reach and ability to build a following — sometimes openly, sometimes not — through so-called “shadowbans”, without ever outright banning them or deleting content.

Kaleta told Breitbart London that “the process of using algorithms to suppress particular views, as long as they do not break Polish law, [will] be regulated” and that “if social media platforms break this law, they will be fined.”

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary has also confirmed that it will be taking action to prevent the shadowbanning of “Christian, conservative, [and] right-wing” voices online.

While some right-wingers have been reluctant to call on elected officials to secure their right to speak freely on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube because they are “private companies”, Kaleta was clear that, for the Law and Justice Party (PiS) government in Poland, the provision of state protection of people’s right to freedom of expression online was merely part of the “civilisational process”.

“Since we have laws regarding banking, telecommunications, the armaments industry, and many other fields, we should also regulate Big Tech,” he insisted, pointing out that social media platforms “provide a concrete service, that is the ability to communicate on a large scale” and compared them to public utilities like telephone companies.

“The owners of social media companies are not running just any business. The Big Tech companies are now monopolies,” he said.

“I mean, imagine if Alexander Graham Bell were to decide who can speak through the telephone and Thomas Edison decided where lightbulbs were to be used?” he asked.

(Read this at Breitbart)

Odd that a government that has been under the jackbooted heel of communists now stands up against Fascist Twitter

The Polish, who have lived under the boot of the real “Russians, Russians, Russians” now is a better source of free speech than Jack Dorsey will ever dream of being. Fascist thug that he is.

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Totalitarianism in Joe Biden’s America


Totalitarianism in coronavirus management

A doctor speaks on the totalitarianism of government in coronavirus management

Life Site News reported on the pressure applied by governmental and corporations against practicing doctors when it comes to the coronavirus.

Following a September 2020 interview with LifeSite’s Jim hale, Dr. Leland Stillman this time speaks out against the “dark collusion of government actors … and corporations,” which is stifling dissent among medical doctors and scientists, as it pertains to pandemic policies.

Back in September, the young doctor had spoken out against forced vaccinations. Stillman had noted that a COVID-19 vaccine must not be made mandatory, and that forcing people to inject it only “serves certain special interests.”

In this new interview, he noted how several doctors are even being targeted and punished financially and personally if they do not obey the COVID “orthodoxy” of the medical and government authorities. Stillman described this suppression of dissent in the medical community as reaching “a level of totalitarianism that even Orwell and Huxley would have struggled to envision.”

Also, the young doctor connected the dots on this “dark collusion” between government officials, medical authorities, and tech corporations, tying in the massive censorship in recent months.

Especially with the lack of social connections and foot traffic due to lockdowns, small businesses and even individuals face a very serious threat of disappearing.

“If Google or Amazon can de-platform you, or if Shopify can shut down your online store front, then all of a sudden you could see just about everyone in society disappear from the public eye overnight, because they have an opinion that may contradict what the mainstream media narrative is.”

Moreover, Stillman said that throughout his entire education and experience as a medical doctor, the notion of lockdowns to solve a pandemic crisis was never a factor. “No one before COVID, that I know of, seriously considered lockdowns to be effective,” he stated.

(Read the closing point by Life Site News at their site)

Since the virus is so small and the gaps in the masks are relatively large, I have heard from doctors that many masks are useless

In light of the small size of the virus and the large gaps in the masks, I have heard from doctors that many masks are effectively useless. However, the government seems to be seeking compliance and not solutions. Therefore, the government requires masks.

Likewise, if doctors find better ways (or run across flaw in the government-approved ways), why not let them speak?

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The building of totalitarianism by making the military pledge allegiance to Democrats

Fox News personality Tucker Carlson discusses the building of totalitarianism under the guise of security.

Our capital city is currently under military occupation. By Inauguration Day, there are expected to be more than 26,000 armed federal troops in Washington. No living American has seen a moment like the one we’re watching now.

For comparison, Lyndon Johnson sent a total of 13,600 federal troops and D.C. Army National Guardsmen to quell the race riots in Washington that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Those riots injured hundreds of people and killed at least 13. In 1864, as the Civil War raged on the other side of the Potomac and Americans died every day in large numbers on the battlefield, there were fewer federal troops protecting Washington, D.C., than there are right now.

But according to our leaders, the so-called “insurrection” of Jan. 6 was much worse than any of that. So in response, they have assembled the largest military presence in Washington in all of American history during peacetime. It’s truly a national force, with Guardsmen from every state in the Union as well as Puerto Rico. The question is, why?

For decades, Washington, D.C., had the highest per-capita law enforcement presence in the country and one of the highest in the world. There was no need to fly in troops from Alaska to keep the city safe. But keeping the city safe is hardly the point of this exercise. The murder rate in the District of Columbia has risen with terrifying speed over the last six months. Men, women and children have been shot to death in the streets, but no one in charge seems to care about that or even notice. So no matter what they are telling you, those 26,000 federal troops are not there for your safety.

Instead, unmistakably, the Democratic Party is using those troops to send the rest of us a message about power: “We’re in charge now. We run this nation, from Honolulu to our colony in the Caribbean and everywhere in between, very much including where you and your family live. Do not question us men with guns. We control the Pentagon.” And indeed, they do.

Republicans have spent years ignoring the leftward drift of our officer corps, but we can’t ignore it now. The mask is off our military leadership. The very same generals who howled at the idea of deploying American troops to stop an invasion of our southern border sent tens of thousands of soldiers with rifles to Washington purely as a show of force on behalf of the political party they support. Once they did that, they allowed Democratic politicians to degrade and politicize the military itself.

Democrats in Congress demanded that the troops sent to Washington this week submit to a political purity test — “ideological vetting, as they put it — to make certain that every soldier professed loyalty to the new regime. Not loyalty to our country, not loyalty to our Constitution, but loyalty to the aims of a specific political party. Nothing like that has ever happened in America and just a few months ago, it would have been unimaginable. Suddenly it’s compulsory.

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., has even gone so far as to say that every White man in this country is a potential murderer, that every White man in America should be under suspicion — purely on the basis of being White and male — of planning a presidential assassination.

On Nov. 5, 2009, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire on innocent people at Fort Hood, Texas. He shot 45 people and 13 of them died. When it emerged later that Hasan was an Islamic extremist and the Army had failed to notice his extremism or in any way protect the public from it, no one at the Pentagon was court-martialed. Instead, the rest of us sat through months of lectures about how we had no right to come to broader conclusions about what had happened at Fort Hood. Yes, the shootings were bad, though not — President Barack Obama made this clear at the time — an act of terrorism. But far worse than mass murder, we were told, would be the sin of drawing any connection between Nidal Hasan’s beliefs and the beliefs of anyone else in our country. Nidal Hasan was literally a lone gunman, not a stand-in for all Muslims.

That’s what they told us. And by the way, it’s OK that they told us that. Most Americans are decent people who don’t blame entire groups for the crimes of a few. Bigotry is immoral and so is collective punishment. There is nothing more un-American than that. But collective punishment is now the official policy of the federal government, and it’s enforced by the Pentagon.

In the meantime, you’ve got to wonder what the Guardsmen themselves think of all of this. Serving in the National Guard is not easy work. Guardsmen aren’t paid much. Some, you’ve got to imagine, are doing it for love of country. Now, they’ve been deployed to their country’s own capital city and they’ve been given orders to shoot their fellow Americans if necessary. That’s a lot to ask.

Now, on top of all of that, they’ve been told that if they were born a certain way, if they’re White and male and therefore evil and dangerous, they themselves are under suspicion of being the enemy. They’re potential killers, assassins, betrayers of a nation.

If you wanted to stoke an irreparable civil conflict, you would talk this way and you would keep talking that way. So where’s the pushback from our defenders? “Tucker Carlson Tonight” didn’t get any calls Monday from Republican senators begging to come on this show to talk about any of this. The Democratic Party is using the military of the United States as a political weapon. But Republicans in Congress just can’t be bothered to notice that.

You’d also think officers at the Pentagon would be outraged by this, but as far as we know, not a single one has resigned in protest of conducting background checks on people because of their race or sex or their political views. We can’t say we know entirely why, but some clearly agree with all of this, and they’d like to see it accelerate.

“I was Chief Prosecutor at Guantanamo for over 2 years,” a former Air Force colonel called Moe Davis announced on Twitter Monday, “and there’s far more evidence of Congressman Madison Cawthorn’s guilt than there was of guilt for 95+ percent [sic] of the detainees. It’s time we start a domestic war on sedition by American terrorists.”

Once again: A career American military officer has called for “a domestic war on sedition by American terrorists”. According to Col. Moe Davis, 25-year-old wheelchair-bound Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C. — who was just elected by American voters to the United States Congress — and the millions of Americans who agree with him and voted Republican in November, must be subdued by force.

Has Twitter seen Moe Davis’ tweet? Has the Secret Service? Do they care? Will a single one of Col. Moe Davis’ many allies in the Democratic Party denounce what he said or even tell him to cool it a little bit?

And what about the news media? Reporters are perpetually on the hunt for what they describe as dangerous extremism. Have they noticed Col. Moe Davis on Twitter? Probably they have, but of course, they agree with him.

On Monday, The Daily Beast, the home page of our highly credentialed but none-too-bright ruling class, ran a piece with this title: “Can U.S. Spy Agencies Stop White Terror?” Other countries, the story pointed out, have domestic spy agencies to fight extremists at home. So, of course, we need one right away. What the piece does not mention is that those other countries include China, North Korea, and Kazakhstan. Domestic spy agency is a not-very-subtle euphemism for secret police. That is what they’re calling for.

So how long will this cycle go on? If you’re hoping America will revert to normal on Wednesday afternoon after Joe Biden is sworn in as president, you are an optimist. You probably assumed the quarantines and mandatory face coverings were temporary, too. Something awful has been unleashed on our country. Unchecked, it will inevitably lead to more awful things. Every action provokes a reaction. That is both physics and human nature.

(Read the closing points at Fox News)

With all of Joe’s contact with the Chinese, it seems he has learned something

When Chinese students attempted to turn to democracy in Tiananmen Square in 1989, they got support from all the locals as they posted their complaints for all to read. However, when the Communist party bosses stopped negotiating with them, those same Communist party bosses brought in army units from areas that did not speak the same language as the students.

ChineseTank

Listen to the 8:29 point of the video where a Puerto Rican National Guard commander tells his soldiers (in Spanish) that they may have to fire upon extremists called “Proud Boys.” Watch a little beyond that to see soldiers being brought in from Alaska.

Now that Obama has purged the officer corps of conservatives (as reflected by the tweet below), what more can we expect but a socialist revolution supported by the socialist army?

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The hiding of a totalitarian genesis in cryptic groups

In the following video, Charlie Kirk quotes Parler messages purportedly created by Gunn (an assumedly founding member of the “Boogaloo Bois” (who led part of the incursion into the Capitol). In that quote, Gunn purportedly says, “Boogaloo Bois, associated with the Black Sons of Liberty, played an important part in the breach of the Capitol. Any moment used to throw a middle finger to tyranny should be capitalized upon. Yesterday, when presented with that opportunity, Bois  went to work to hype up the people.” And then he (Gunn) posted to twitter “We were not real MAGA. We were infiltrators.”


Although searches of Twitter show that the Boogaloo Bois have gotten on message with the rest of the Democrats (and have deleted any message that would tie a left-wing group to the attack), they have not been able to control everything said about them. Additionally, who knows whether Parler will be able to show the messages that were formerly on it whenever it finally comes back up?

That is, don’t think that the Boogaloo Bois are right-wing (as often labelled by Twitter people and the press). As noted in this slip of a tweet, the Boogaloo Bois have allied with BLM since the summer of 2020.
https://twitter.com/Spencerthefree/status/1351380573424545792

Five stories demonstrating the resemblance of the Left to the Gestapo


Like the firing squads of the Fascist Spain, the Left silences the opposition

  1. Apple pressures Parler to silence conservatives

According to a 24 June 2019 article at Reclaim The Net, Apple has used intimidation and the threat of loss of access to the App Store to make Parler conform to its leftist practices.

John Matze, the founder and CEO of free speech social network Parler, says that Apple has given him an ultimatum — ban “offensive” content off Parler or the Parler app will be banned from the App Store. Matze says he refused and now Apple is preventing Parler from updating its app.

Matze gave an update on the situation in a Parler post.

JohnMatzeParlerPost

(Read more at Reclaim The Net)

It seems that Apple remains so committed to leftism that they are willing to kill start-ups and endanger their good name.

I am joining Parler and dropping as many Apple products as I have.

…

  1. Google executive admits they are thought police and will be intervening to stop Trump in 2020

In a 24 June 2019 article at Big League Politics (notably not the New York Times or the Washington Post), a Project Veritas exposé has exposed Google for the totalitarians they work to be.

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Investigative journalist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released hidden camera videos showing a Google executive explaining how preventing Trump and similar leaders is at the top of the monolithic corporation’s list of priorities.

“Elizabeth Warren is saying we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better it will make it worse, because all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that,” said Jen Gennai, who works as Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation.

Project Veritas notes that Gennai is in charge of the division of Google that is responsible for implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. This includes making sure that political outcomes unfavorable for liberals cannot be reached.

“We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, what happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again,” Gennai added.

“We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?” she asked.

Gennai is proud of her organization’s push for thought control, and the “Machine Learning Fairness” guidelines that have been introduced following Donald Trump’s presidential victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“The reason we launched our A.I. principles is because people were not putting that line in the sand, that they were not saying what’s fair and what’s equitable so we’re like, well we are a big company, we’re going to say it,” Gennai said.

(Read more at Big League Politics)

So, as long as the Left can control your opinion, they will let you make legitimate inquiries.

Is this any way to conduct a free society that depends on continual education?

…

  1. How did Google become the internet’s censor and master manipulator, blocking access to millions of websites?

In a 22 June 2019 US News article, this stalwartly left-leaning branch of mainstream media informs us of Google’s tendency to block information (instead of providing it, as most would expect of a major search engine).

worst-censorship

Google, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor.

The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet. Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed, a practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block.

When Google’s employees or algorithms decide to block our access to information about a news item, political candidate or business, opinions and votes can shift, reputations can be ruined and businesses can crash and burn. Because online censorship is entirely unregulated at the moment, victims have little or no recourse when they have been harmed. Eventually, authorities will almost certainly have to step in, just as they did when credit bureaus were regulated in 1970. The alternative would be to allow a large corporation to wield an especially destructive kind of power that should be exercised with great restraint and should belong only to the public: the power to shame or exclude.

If Google were just another mom-and-pop shop with a sign saying “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” that would be one thing. But as the golden gateway to all knowledge, Google has rapidly become an essential in people’s lives – nearly as essential as air or water. We don’t let public utilities make arbitrary and secretive decisions about denying people services; we shouldn’t let Google do so either.

(Read more at US News)

Because I respect good reporting at mainstream media outlets when I do see it, I have to praise their enumeration of the nine blacklists created and used by Google. You really need to look at it.

Nonetheless, after you look at the nine ways Google daily blocks us from news, maps, and other information, you should watch the grilling Senator Ted Cruz gave to the Google representative. Hopefully, his passion will be translated into a law or hearings that will see the breakup of the social media giants.

…

Like Hitler’s Brownshirts, leftists often revert to attacks

  1. Eight instances of intolerant Trump haters harassing high-profile conservatives

As shown by a 26 June 2019 Breitbart article, there have been a number of attacks on even high profile conservatives.

Secret Service took a Chicago restaurant employee into custody Tuesday evening after she spit on President Trump’s son, Eric Trump. However, that is far from the first time a radical leftist has lashed out at a prominent Trump-associated figure.

There has been a rash of instances of the “tolerant” left lashing out and mistreating Trump’s immediate family, members of his administration, and those merely associated by ideology.

(Read the full list of victims at Breitbart)

Additionally, don’t forget the physical violence documented during 2016, 2017, and 2018.

…

  1. Knowing Nazism by example

In light of:

  • the nature of the Prager University videos, the Project Veritas work, and the Jordan Peterson videos do not approach the realm occupied by the concept of “Nazi”

and

  • the censorious actions of Google do reek of the totalitarian state described in 1984

I suggest that everyone review the video included in the following tweet.

…

Liberals show their tendency to threaten our freedoms


Democrat Ted Lieu: ‘I Would Love to Be Able to Regulate the Content of Speech’

In a recent CNN interview that was subsequently reported in a 12 December 2018 Washington Times article, Democrat Ted Lieu revealed his dictatorial tendencies.

Rep. Ted Lieu told CNN on Wednesday that his desire to regulate speech is only thwarted by the U.S. Constitution.

An interview on Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s testimony before lawmakers with House Judiciary Committee took a tyrannical turn when the California Democrat expressed his “love” for the idea of controlling free speech.

The moment happened after host Brianna Keilar asked if Mr. Lieu failed to “press” Google’s CEO on Tuesday regarding the company’s vulnerabilities to “outside interference.”

“It’s a very good point you make,” Mr. Lieu replied. “I would love if I could have more than five minutes to question witnesses. Unfortunately, I don’t get that opportunity. However, I would love to be able to regulate the content of speech. The First Amendment prevents me from doing so, and that’s simply a function of the First Amendment, but I think over the long run, it’s better the government does not regulate the content of speech.”
Viewers on The Washington Free Beacon’s YouTube channel were stunned at the lawmaker’s admission.

(Read more at Washington Times)

This remotely sounds like Barack Obama before he decided to circumvent immigration law by creating DAPA and DACA.

Thankfully, we have been saved from the effects of DAPA and hopefully will see the demise of DACA. Nonetheless, you have to wonder if Rep. Lieu will make a move on the freedom of speech now that the Democrats have the House.

  

Project Dragonfly

Google denies its partnership with the repressive government of China to repress free speech

Report: Google Hasn’t Halted ‘Project Dragonfly,’ Continues to Devote ‘Substantial’ Resources

As a possible preview of the free-speech-killing acts available to Democrats, Breitbart reports in a 12 December 2018 article (at least in the title) how Google may be hiding the development of a tool that the government of China may use to direct searches.

In an article, Wednesday, the Verge analyzed Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s comments about Project Dragonfly, Google’s censored Chinese search app project, during his hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

The Verge reported that though Pichai claimed there are “no plans” to “launch a search product in China,” the company is indeed still working on the project.

“[Pichai] made it clear that, whether the company currently has ‘plans’ to launch the product, Google certainly hasn’t halted work completely,” declared the Verge. “In fact, it has continued to devote substantial resources to the project. While saying the effort was ‘limited,’ Pichai at one point said Google had devoted about 100 people to it, although The Intercept has reported the number is closer to 300.”

During the hearing, Pichai repeatedly denied Google’s intentions to launch Project Dragonfly in China, after Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) asked multiple questions about the project.

…

After Marino then asked, “Am I then to understand you have no plans to enter into any agreements with China concerning Google, how it’s used, in China?” Pichai replied, “We currently do not have a Search product there… Right now there are no plans to launch a Search product in China.”

(Read more at Breitbart)

Considering the times Google has been caught lying about its censorship of conservative videographers, lying about conservative cancer survivors, lying to Congress about the bias built into its search engine, lying about meddling in the campaign of Rep. Blackburn, and caught in many other lying events — something tells me not to trust them here.

Censorship by Facebook, Twitter, & other media giants


Thanks Breitbart for this explanatory illustration.

Midterm meddling: Twitter follows Facebook & blacklists GOP candidate’s family story of immigration from Cambodia

In a 16 August 2-18 Breitbart article, Facebook and Twitter have been shown to be stifling political speech in California again.

Twitter has followed in Facebook’s footsteps by blocking a campaign video ad for Republican congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng. Facebook eventually admitted that a campaign video including the communist atrocities in Cambodia is not “shocking, disrespectful, or sensational,” but Twitter, which describes the ad as “obscene,” disagrees.

Shortly after Facebook came under fire for refusing to allow Republican Congressional candidate Elizabeth Heng to advertise with her campaign ad on their platform, Twitter has made the same decision. Facebook blocked the ad, which shared the story of Heng’s family being forced to flee Cambodia for the U.S., claiming that the Facebook couldn’t allow videos that contained “shocking, disrespectful, or sensational” imagery on their advertising platform. The ad was eventually approved with a Facebook spokesperson stating: “Upon further review, it is clear the video contains historical imagery relevant to the candidate’s story. We have since approved the ad and it is now running on Facebook.” A decision Twitter apparently disagrees with.

Twitter has blacklisted the campaign ad, according to Heng. The Heng campaign stated in a press release: “In recent attempts to advertise Elizabeth Heng’s campaign video on Twitter, the campaign has received a message from the company stating that upon review, the ad is ‘ineligible to participate in the Twitter Ads program at this time based on our Inappropriate Content policy.’ Twitter defined inappropriate content as ‘that which is offensive, vulgar, or obscene.’”

…

Heng’s advertising refusal comes shortly after Infowars host Alex Jones received a seven-day suspension on the platform and many Twitter users reported a decline in followers as Twitter purged accounts from its platform.

(Read more at Breitbart)

Did Twitter find the images of Pol Pot’s Cambodia offensive, vulgar, or obscene? That is, did the brutality of a communist regime offend the millennial sensibilities of Twitter? Or was it scenes of Fresno’s deteriorating storefronts that offended Twitter?

If it was the images of the results of economic radicals like Pol Pot, will Twitter, Google, or Facebook block video of Patriot’s Day?

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Facebook opens up on vote meddling

A 4 August 2018 Associated Press article points out how Facebook has admitted to vote meddling (however, it does not mention the removal of conservative Brazilian pages or similar actions by Facebook).

For a company bent on making the world more open, Facebook has long been secretive about the details of how it runs its social network — particularly how things go wrong and what it does about them.

Yet on Tuesday, Facebook rushed forward to alert Congress and the public that it had recently detected a small but “sophisticated” case of possible Russian election manipulation. Has the social network finally acknowledged the need to keep the world informed about the big problems it’s grappling with, rather than doing so only when dragged kicking and screaming to the podium?

While the unprompted revelation does signal a new, albeit tightly controlled openness for the company, there is still plenty that Facebook isn’t saying. Many experts remain unconvinced that this is a true culture change and not mere window dressing.

“This is all calculated very carefully,” said Timothy Carone, a business professor at the University of Notre Dame. He and other analysts noted that Facebook announced its discovery of 32 accounts and pages intended to stir up U.S. political discord just a week after the company’s stock dropped almost 20 percent — its worst plunge since going public.

But Facebook’s proactive disclosure, including a conference call for reporters with chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, struck a markedly different tone from the company’s ham-handed approach to a string of scandals and setbacks over the past two years. That has included:

  • CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous dismissal of the idea that fake news on Facebook could have influenced the 2016 election as “a pretty crazy idea”;
  • The company’s foot-dragging as evidence mounted of a 2016 Russian election-interference effort conducted on Facebook and other social-media sites;
  • Zuckerberg, again, declining for nearly a week to publicly address the privacy furor over a Trump campaign consultant, Cambridge Analytica, that scavenged data from tens of millions of Facebook users for its own election-influence efforts.

A chastened Facebook has since taken steps toward transparency, many of them easy to overlook. In April, it published for the first time the detailed guidelines its moderators use to police unacceptable material. It has provided additional, if partial, explanations of how it collects user data and what it does with it. And it has forced disclosure of the funding and audience targeting of political advertisements, which it now also archives for public scrutiny.

…

Facebook said its timing was motivated by an upcoming protest event in Washington that was promoted by a suspicious page connected to a Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency. Several people connected to the IRA have been indicted by the U.S. special counsel for attempting to interfere in the 2016 election.

Despite Zuckerberg’s repeated mantra — delivered to relentless effect in some 10 hours of testimony before Congress in April — that the company now really gets it, some who know the company best have their doubts.

David Kirkpatrick, the author a Facebook history, argues that neither Zuckerberg nor Sandberg have ever shown themselves to be “deeply alarmed in public.” As a result, he suggests, Facebook seems more concerned with managing its image than with solving the actual problem at hand.

Such issues run deep for the company. Some of its biggest critics, including former employees such as Sandy Parakilas and early Facebook investor Roger McNamee, say the company needs to revamp its business model from the ground up to see any meaningful change.

These critics would like to see Facebook rely less on tracking its users in order to sell targeted advertising, and to cut back on addicting features such as endless notifications that keep drawing people back in. Parakilas, for example, has advocated for a subscription-based model, letting users pay to user Facebook instead of having their data harvested.

Merely hiring more moderators, or hanging hopes on the evolution of artificial intelligence, isn’t going to cut it, in their view. There have also been widespread calls for Facebook to acknowledge that it is, in a sense, a media company, responsible for what happens on its platforms — a characterization the social network has long fought.

For all that, Facebook is well ahead of Silicon Valley rivals such as Google and Twitter when it comes to openness — even if only because it’s attracted the lion’s share of criticism, said Paul Levinson, a media studies professor at Fordham University.

But Facebook “can’t win at this game,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a University of Virginia professor of media studies whose 2018 book “Antisocial Media” critiques Facebook’s effect on democracy and society. Because it’s so huge — 2.2 billion global users and counting — and so difficult to police, he said, “it will always be vulnerable to hijacking and will never completely clean up its content.”

(Read more at the Associated Press)

This is not big news. So what if Facebook caves again to the socialist forces that would limit free speech. This allows the media giant to feel good about itself. Too bad Facebook could not learn from the lessons provided by Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il, and George Orwell.

Then again, there was the example of Barack Obama.

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Twitter takes a stab at silencing the “shitty people”

In the following undercover video, the interviewer got Olinda Hassan, Policy Manager for Twitter Trust and Safety, to admit that “we’re trying to get the ‘shitty people’ not to show up.”

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Spotify, Apple, Google, and Facebook purge the free speech rights of Alex Jones of InfoWars

In the insightful fiction from the middle of the last century (1984 by George Orwell), the author saw the deleterious effect of a central government that controlled everything down to speech and thought. That insight came from exposure to governments that attempted to provide everything to the working class — down to what we should think.

Even with these cautionary tales, a number of media giants (Spotify, Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook) have taken up the task of limiting the free speech rights of others.

The rise of corporate censorship

A 7 August 2018 Spiked Online article delves into censorship by the online media giants.

So we’re now trusting the capitalist class, massive, unaccountable corporations, to decide on our behalf what we may listen to and talk about? This is the take-home message, the terrible take-home message, of the expulsion of Alex Jones’ Infowars network from Apple, Facebook and Spotify and of the wild whoops of delight that this summary banning generated among so-called liberals: that people are now okay with allowing global capitalism to govern the public sphere and to decree what is sayable and what is unsayable. Corporate censorship, liberals’ new favourite thing – how bizarre.

We live in strange times. On one hand it is fashionable to hate capitalism these days. No middle-class home is complete without a Naomi Klein tome; making memes of Marx is every twentysomething Corbynistas’ favourite pastime. But on the other hand we seem content to trust Silicon Valley, the new frontier in corporate power, to make moral judgements about what kind of content people should be able to see online. Radicals and liberals declared themselves ‘very glad’ that these business elites enforced censorship against Jones and Infowars. We should be ‘celebrating the move’, said Vox, because ‘it represents a crucial step forward in the fight against fake news’. Liberals for capitalist censorship! The world just got that bit odder, and less free.

Over the past 24 hours, Jones and much of his Infowars channel has been ‘summarily banned’ – in the excitable words of Vox – from Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube. Initially, Facebook and YouTube had taken only selective measures against Jones. In response to a Twitterstorm about his presence on these platforms, they took down some of his videos. But then Apple decided to ban Jones entirely – removing all episodes of his podcast from its platform – and the other online giants followed suit. Or as the thrilled liberal commentary put it: ‘The dominoes started to fall.’ Despite having millions of subscribers, despite there being a public interest in what he has to say, Jones has been cast out of the world of social media, which is essentially the public square of the 21st century, on the basis that what he says is wicked.

This is censorship. There will of course be apologists for the corporate control of speech, on both the left and right, who will say, ‘It’s only censorship when the government does it!’. They are so wrong. When enormous companies that have arguably become the facilitators of public debate expel someone and his ideas because they find them morally repugnant, that is censorship. Powerful people have deprived an individual and his network of a key space in which they might propagate their beliefs. Aka censorship.

(Read more at Spiked Online)

The Real Reason for the Left’s Double Standard on Hate Speech

Having used the ideas of Dr. Brown as much as they aligned with my own, I again find myself dipping from the well of Dr. Michael Brown’s thought (which often appears in OneNewsNow and TownHall) in his 9 August 2018 article on the left’s propensity to excuse its own hate speech.

Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I’m a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I’m a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I’m a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.
Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, “Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet.”

The response was consistent: “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.
For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: “Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!”

(Read more at AskDrBrown.org)

NBC ignores an Antifa attack on its own reporter and crew

A 12 August 2018 NewsBusters article illustrates how a “news” outlet self-censors a significant story about a group who would really repress the free press.

On the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville protests, white supremacists and radical leftists known as Antifa descended on the Virginia town once more to commit more violence. Late Saturday night, NBC News reporter Cal Perry and his crew were in the thick of it as Antifa members ganged up on them and attacked. The next morning, NBC’s Sunday Today ignored the attack and suggested the media was simply “heckled” by their assaulters.

On Twitter, Perry was documenting the protesters as they marched through the streets of college town when they started to get “very aggressive with the media” and trying to block their camera shots. “Yeah. We’re getting a lot of this. Protesters trying to grab our camera,” he responded to one Twitter commenter telling him to “f**k off national media vulture.”

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Things got super-heated when one Antifa protestor shouted “F**k you, snitch a** news b**ch. F**k you” and tried to either pull the camera away from the person using it or knock it to the ground. It was unclear in the video.

Despite the video evidence on the ground from their own reporter, NBC went to Garrett Haake, who was at the White House in anticipation of violence there as another white supremacist rally was set to be held. “Overnight, tense moments in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, strong far left protesters heckling the media and chanting anti-police slogans,” he suggested at the top of his report. They actually used footage Perry and his crew shot but didn’t show anything from their attack.

The assault on NBC’s reporter came almost a year since their political director, Chuck Todd used his MSNBC program, MTP Daily to elevate Antifa’s violence as a legitimate tactic against the right. He even doubled down and allowed them to use the formerly prestigious Meet the Press as a platform to push their hate and violent methods. Todd has never condemned them.

Todd appeared on Sunday Today and had nothing to say about the attack or Antifa, which had been declared a domestic terrorism group by the State of New Jersey before he had them on last year. Instead of condemning Antifa, he lambasted the President for criticizing anthem protesters and targeted his supporters as racists.

“So I don’t think, if the President is, quote, ‘learned anything’ I think in his mind, he has seen this is an effective political strategy to keep his base, his base,” he declared about what the President had learned since last year’s violence. “That it is the president’s continuation of using to be generous, dog whistles, others say they’re not silent. You can hear the whistles pretty loudly.”

It’s sad and disturbing that NBC would choose to ignore violent leftists assaulting their own employees in exchange for railing against President Trump’s voters, but this appears to be the world we live in now. The assault also came after the entire liberal media had been trying to convince the public that Trump supporters where violent ones reporters had to watch out for.

(Read more at NewsBusters)

I have always been warned not to “cut off my nose to spite my face.” It looks like NBC let its nose get cut off and then dared the rest of us not to notice the profuse bleeding.

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Patreon and Mastercard ban Robert Spencer without explanation

Jihad Watch reports in a 15 August 2018 article that Robert Spencer has been banned by Patreon and Mastercard without explanation. Nonetheless, this banning likely stems from his shining the light of truth on Islam.

Recently Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes have been banned from various social media platforms, in a desperate attempt by the Left to ensure that the 2016 election results aren’t repeated in 2018. Some people say it doesn’t matter that these men were deplatformed, because they don’t like what they say, and what’s more, these are all private companies. They are indeed private companies, but they have a virtual monopoly today over the means of communication, and once they start banning people because they don’t like what they say, they’ve set a precedent that is inimical to the survival of a free society.

If only approved viewpoints can be aired, we live in a totalitarian state, not a free society, and the effects of this will reverberate in our lives in ways we cannot imagine. If you think that the banning will stop when those who are deemed “crazy” or “extremist” are all banned, you’re in for a surprise.

Yesterday, they came for me, albeit in not yet as thoroughgoing a manner as the way they went after Jones and McInnes.

(Read more at Jihad Watch)

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Reasons Democrats might be reeling even more


Perez purges progressives from the DNC in favor of Hillary-supporting fundraisers.

After Hillary’s loss, the DNC increases Hillary support

Perez puts in more Hillary-backed members to the Rules and Bylaws of the DNC

A 19 October 2017 article on NBCnews.com details how Hillary’s supporters are once again performing an end run on the Sanders and other camps within the Democrat party.

A shake-up is underway at the Democratic National Committee as several key longtime officials have lost their posts, exposing a still-raw rift in the party and igniting anger among those in its progressive wing who see retaliation for their opposition to DNC Chairman Tom Perez.

The ousters come ahead of the DNC’s first meeting, in Las Vegas, Nevada, since Perez took over as chairman with a pledge this year to unite a party that had become badly divided during the brutal Bernie Sanders-Hillary Clinton 2016 primary race.

Complaints began immediately after party officials saw a list of Perez’s appointments to DNC committees and his roster of 75 “at-large” members, who are chosen by the chair.

The removal and demotion of a handful of veteran operatives stood out, as did what critics charge is the over-representation of Clinton-backed members on the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which helps set the terms for the party’s presidential primary, though other Sanders and Ellison backers remain represented.

Those who have been pushed out include:

  • Ray Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic chairman and longtime DNC official who ran against Perez for chair before backing Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. Buckley lost his spots on the Executive Committee and DNC Rules Committee.
  • James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and prominent Sanders backer, is no longer co-chair of the Resolutions Committee and is off the Executive Committee, a spot he has held since 2001.
  • Alice Germond, the party’s longtime former secretary and a vocal Ellison backer, who was removed from her at-large appointment to the DNC.
  • Barbra Casbar Siperstein, who supported Ellison and Buckley, was tossed from the Executive Committee.

The moves exposed a rift in the partnership between Perez and his deputy chair, Ellison, who have publicly broadcast their “bromance” since Perez tapped Ellison for the post in a show of unity after their hard-fought race this year for the party’s chairmanship.

“I’m concerned about the optics, and I’m concerned about the impact,” Zogby said of the changes. “I want to heal the wound of 2016.”

Buckley said that while he understands Perez, as chairman, can do as he pleases, “it’s all just very disappointing.”

Germond has been on the DNC since the 1980s and was a vocal backer of Ellison for DNC chairman.

“It is quite unusual for a former party officer who has been serving on the DNC for forever to just be left out in the cold without even a call from the chairman,” Germond said. “So I assumed it had something to do with myself support for Keith.”

“I understand that I fought very hard for Keith Ellison. And I understand that to the winners go the spoils,” she added.

The DNC denied any retaliation, saying that the changes were an effort to diversify and freshen the party’s leadership and that all the party’s officers had a chance to offer input. They touted new additions like Marisa Richmond, a millennial black transgender activist, and the first Dreamer member, Ellie Perez, to point to the DNC’s efforts at diversity.

“This year’s slate of at-large DNC member nominees reflects the unprecedented diversity of our party’s coalition,” said DNC spokesperson Michael Tyler.

…

(Read more at NBCnews.com)

It seems very likely that many Democrats will soon be disillusioned with their party. This is also reported on the Daily Wire, Vox, the Washington Post, and other outlets.

Ravel suggests suing all who engage in a (formerly) free press

Obama’s Chair of the Federal Election Commission wants “fake news” to be regulated

The Washington Examiner reports in an 18 October 2017 article how Ann Ravel wants to suppress free speech under the guise of stopping “fake news.”

Political content on the internet, paid or not, should face substantial federal regulation to eliminate undefined “disinformation,” and users of platforms and news feeds, from Facebook, to Twitter, to the Drudge Report and even New York Times, could be punished for sharing “fake news” from those sites, the former Democratic chair of the FEC is urging.

In a broad proposal that adds threatening libel suits to regulatory plans already pushed by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, ex-chair Ann Ravel believes that there is support for expanded regulation in the wake of reports foreign governments spent $100,000 on 2016 political ads on Facebook.

She would include “fake news,” not just paid ads, to be regulated, though it’s never defined other than the Democrat’s description of “disinformation.” And anybody who shares or retweets it could face a libel suit.

She would also use regulation to “improve voter competence,” according to the new proposal titled Fool Me Once: The Case for Government Regulation of ‘Fake News.’ Ravel, who now lectures at Berkeley Law, still has allies on the FEC who support internet regulation. The paper was co-written by Abby K. Wood, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, and Irina Dykhne, a student at USC Gould School of Law.

The proposal immediately came under fire from from the Republican FEC commissioner who for years has been warning of the left’s effort to regulate political talk they don’t like, especially on conservative newsfeeds like Drudge.

Lee Goodman told Secrets, “Ann’s proposal is full blown regulation of all political content, even discussion of issues, posted at any time, for free or for a fee, on any online platform, from Facebook to the NewYorkTimes.com.”

He was especially critical of the undefined nature of “disinformation” to be regulated and the first-ever call for libel suits to snuff out talk Ravel doesn’t like.

In their proposal, the trio wrote, “after a social media user clicks ‘share’ on a disputed item (if the platforms do not remove them and only label them as disputed), government can require that the user be reminded of the definition of libel against a public figure. Libel of public figures requires ‘actual malice,’ defined as knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. Sharing an item that has been flagged as untrue might trigger liability under libel laws.”

Goodman said, “A fatal flaw of Ann’s proposal is that it cannot define what is, or is not, ‘disinformation’ in a political message. Nevertheless, it proposes to tag threats of libel lawsuits and liability to thousands of American citizens who might want to retweet or forward a message that somebody else subjectively considers to be ‘disinformational.’ I call that the big chill.”

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(Read more at Washington Examiner)

One question that I have centers on the anonymous sources that the Washington Post and New York Times, will they have to face these libel suits for each of the incorrect stories? Will they face additional suits for each time their paper refers to those incorrect stories? Will other mainstream media sources be sued for repeating incorrect stories (that is, will they charge the LA Times, instead of the end users on Twitter, Drudge, Facebook, and other outlets)?