Twitter says it will label tweets from Trump and other leaders that break its rules

New York (CNN Business)Twitter plans to place a disclaimer on future tweets from world leaders that break its rules but which Twitter decides are in the "public interest," the company said in a blog post Thursday.

This policy change could face its most prominent test in President Trump. Trump has repeatedly tested Twitter's community standards with his regular tirades on the platform and some of the president's tweets have run afoul of Twitter's rules.

Twitter (TWTR) has in the past allowed tweets from Trump and other world leaders to remain online, even though they broke the company's rules, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to CNN Business, because it believes the tweets are in the public interest.

But putting a disclaimer on one of Trump's tweets would almost certainly bring a firestorm of criticism down on Twitter's head. Republicans in Washington, including Trump, often claim without real evidence that technology companies are biased against conservatives. Such a disclaimer on a Trump tweet, even if he had clearly violated Twitter's rules, would provoke a new cycle of such complaints at a time when Washington is increasingly investigating Big Tech over concerns about antitrust and privacy.

"This is not about perceived bias but about providing more clarity if our rules have been broken," a Twitter spokesperson told CNN Business.

Asked by CNN Business, Twitter would not provide examples of tweets that it had previously kept up as being in the public interest despite rule violations.

The new feature will make clear when Twitter makes that call in the future. "The Twitter Rules about abusive behavior apply to this Tweet," the disclaimer will read. "However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the Tweet to remain available."

There are some exceptions, however. "[D]irect threats of violence or calls to commit violence against an individual" are "unlikely to be considered in the public interest," Twitter said in the blog post.

Twitter said a "cross-functional" team, including representatives from its trust and safety, legal, and public policy teams will decide if a tweet is in the public interest.

The company provided a list of criteria that would inform this decision, including "Whether preserving a Tweet will allow others to hold the government official, candidate for public office, or appointee accountable for their statements."

"When a Tweet has this notice placed on it, it will feature less prominently on Twitter," the company said, adding that such tweets will not appear in Twitter's algorithmically generated "Top Tweets," its live event pages, and some other features.

The new feature will apply to verified government officials, political candidates and people who are being considered for a government position and who have more than 100,000 followers, Twitter said.

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Reddit quarantines largest Trump subreddit r/The_Donald with over 750K followers

In the latest round of social media censorship, Reddit has quarantined the largest subreddit in favor of President Donald Trump, r/The_Donald, with over 750,000 followers, restricting access. The move comes amid a crackdown of conservative content on social media platforms, with users on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube being censored, suspended, banned and demonetized and Trump calling for a social media summit to address the censorship.

Since 2016, the r/The_Donald subreddit has grown significantly and is a highly trafficked go-to locale for Trump supporters online. It describes itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

In a message to the group by one of its moderators on June 26 announcing the quarantine and measures being taken to be reinstated, it stated, “we were quarantined without warning for some users that were upset about the Oregon Governor sending cops to round up Republican lawmakers to come back to vote on bills before their state chambers. None of these comments that violated Reddit’s rules and our Rule 1 [against advocating violence] were ever reported to us moderators to take action on. Those comments were reported on by an arm of the DNC and picked up by multiple news outlets.”

So, there were a few posts that advocated violence, but they were not reported to the group’s moderators, but to the media. Namely, Media Matters ran an article “A pro-Trump subreddit is full of calls for violence in support of Oregon Republicans.” Two days later, the subreddit was quarantined.

So, it’s a typical story for the internet. In a forum with hundreds of thousands of users, just like every comments section on a large website or Facebook or Twitter, some nasty, rotten comments get included. When something is reported to moderators, they remove it. But most people just ignore the offending comments and carry on civil discussions, but according to Reddit, they are now expected to wield omniscient control and report any posts that violate rules.

And if they don’t, it’s ban-land for r/The_Donald.

Never mind that the offending posts violated the subreddit’s own rules which they were enforcing manually. Anyone can understand that when you have 750,000 followers it’s hard to moderate each and every comment with just a couple dozen or so moderators and so I imagine stuff slips through the cracks all the time.

In any event, the group says it is pro-police, and stated, “we have been very pro law enforcement as long as I can remember, and that is early on in r/The_Donald’s history. We have many members that are law enforcement that come to our wonderful place and interact because they feel welcome here. Many are fans of President Trump and we are fans of them. They put their lives on the line daily for the safety of our communities. To have this as a reason for our quarantine is abhorrent on our users’ part and we will not stand for it.”

The post went on to denounce violence and urged followers to help report any calls for violence, as it has done in the past.

In a letter to the group’s moderators, Reddit acknowledged that the subreddit attempts to follow the rules by removing bad posts: “We recognize that you do remove posts that are reported, but we are troubled that violent content more often goes unreported…”

And so, Reddit suggests, “User reports and downvotes are an essential way that Reddit functions to moderate content.”

The moderators noted in its initial comment on the letter from Reddit, “It would seem they’ve set up an impossible standard as a reason to kill us before the 2020 election.”

But, the moderators have since promised to do what they could and are enlisting the entire group to help police content on the subreddit, stating, “We have a limited amount of moderators and do thousands of actions a day on things that are reported. Our mods work hard and work for free for the love of our President and this community. We cannot go into threads and read every single comment. That is where we need you to come in and help. If you see something that breaks the rules, report it and hit that deport button. The rest of Reddit and many on the left would like to see us gone. They won’t hit that report button. They will see it and send it to the media or admins. Don’t give them that satisfaction, report it to us and we will take care of it. We have documented cases where they actually will instigate it with alts that we catch and report those.”

The moderators also warned users that any violent content would now be summarily banned, “If you make a comment that breaks the violence rule, you will be banned just like a shill because after this warning, only shills will be doing it to try and get us banned.”

In response to the quarantine, Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, saying, “the Federal Trade Commission needs to open an investigation into anticompetitive actions by social media platforms. Given the appearance that the activities of various social media platforms are colluding against Republicans, conservatives and Trump supporters for political purposes along with the threat of deplatforming, this significantly harms conservative groups’ ability to monetize their organizations and to communicate with their voluntary followers. These platforms set themselves up as neutral arbiters designed to allow organizations to access to their followings they invested resources to develop. The arbitrary denial of service is a violation of the rights and underlying contract when users chose to invest resources into developing followers on these platforms.”

UPDATE: One bright side for the subreddit, since the quarantine was announced, they have acquired about another 10,000 followers as the so-called Streisand Effect attracts onlookers and supporters when something is hidden or censored. The current count as of this writing is 763,000 followers.

No word yet on whether r/The_Donald will be banned for all time, but if it is, watch for calls from conservatives and Republicans that social media Big Tech firms are biased against President Trump and his supporters and need to be regulated in order to protect the digital civil rights of users — and to protect our competitive representative political system. Stay tuned.

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Australia: Some Leftist bile over free speech


The angry Jacqueline Maley, complete with forced smile

Jacqueline Maley of the SMH exhibits the angry, abusive Leftist mind very clearly.  Below are some excerpts of what she wrote about Bettina Arndt.  It would be called hate speech if a conservative had written it. It reeks of hate.  A comment about it received from Bettina Arndt below:

"Signs of desperation from journalist Jacqueline Maley in her extremely nasty, personal attack on me last week in the Sydney Morning Herald. The feminists are clearly worried that I am winning a few rounds."

Maley starts out on an hilarious note.  She seems to think free speech was alive and well when the Riot Squad had to be called to enable Bettina's talk to go ahead.  She is clearly just a Leftist bigot determined to think that the coercive Left can do no wrong

And, most ironically,  after her explosion of bile directed at Bettina she ends advocating "civility, and the will, to listen to each other respectfully".   She clearly is in deep denial about her own behaviour.  Freud would find her mental defences fascinating


It is largely because of publicity around a talk Arndt gave at Sydney University last year that federal Education Minister Dan Tehan called a review into free speech in universities.

The Arndt talk was part of what she called her "Fake Rape Crisis Tour". She was invited by the university's Liberal Club. About 40 students, led by the women's group on campus, protested against the event. Police were called when some tried to block the entrance and disrupt the talk. They were unsuccessful - it went ahead. Arndt was free to spread her views.

Somewhat awkwardly, the independent review into campus free speech, conducted by former High Court chief justice Robert French, found that "claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated".

Not having got what they wanted - confirmation of a crisis they asserted existed - the usual voices in the conservative media, and Dan Tehan, have focused instead on French's recommendation that universities adopt a Model Code to promote free speech on campuses.

In the conclusions of his report, French mentions the idea of "intellectual rubbish", and notes, rather drily, that "there certainly is an abundance of it".

As French puts it: "The question may be asked whether a higher-education provider should be obliged to host any intellectual rubbish that wants to cross its threshold."

The answer is probably yes, as long as the content of the speech is not unlawful.

For my money, Arndt's views fall into that category. They are laughable, as Bolt demonstrated, but also dangerous because they promote misogynistic and incorrect claims about women.

But probably the best antidote to Bettina Arndt's ideas being promulgated is Bettina Arndt.

The more she speaks the more it becomes clear she is floating, weightless, in some sort of fact-free space-void, hoping for a Mark Latham or a Milo Yiannopolis to come and lend her some true notoriety of the kind that might help her sell a few books.

Perhaps Arndt could join with union boss John Setka for a speaking tour - the ultimate intellectual odd-couple, they seem to share some views on men's rights. Call it "Betts and Sets" and watch the tickets sell themselves.

As Sydney University Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence has pointed out, our entire culture is becoming more polarised and tribal in its views, and we are losing the civility, and the will, to listen to each other respectfully, or admit when we have it wrong.

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'He purposely misgendered Caitlyn Jenner!' Brody Jenner faces a furious backlash after calling his transgender father 'he' TWICE

A man must not refer to his father as "he"?

Brody Jenner has been slammed by people online after he misgendered his father, Caitlyn Jenner, twice in the debut episode of The Hills: New Beginnings.

During the premiere for the MTV reboot, Brody — who is the son of Caitlyn and Linda Thompson — was seen at a dinner with cast member Frankie Delgado when his wife, who also named Kaitlynn, was brought up in conversation.

The show then cut to an interview with the 35-year-old reality star where he opened up about his father transitioning from a man to a woman and chose the same name as Brody's wife.

'My dad, he also became a woman — don't wanna forget about that one!' Brody said. 'I had been dating Kaitlynn Carter for four and a half years, and my dad came out and said that he wanted to be called Caitlyn. Two Caitlyns....'

Viewers caught onto the hint Brody was giving about his dad and the choice of name.

But more people had an issue with Brody using 'he' twice in the statement instead of 'she' to describe his father.

'Brody Jenner remains a pile of trash + seems to really enjoy purposely misgendering Caitlyn Jenner,' one viewer wrote on Twitter after watching the interview.

When Caitlyn, 69, first announced she was transitioning to a woman in 2015, she was very understanding with her six children when it came to using pronouns.

Both Kendall and Kylie Jenner will refer to Caitlyn as a 'she' out of respect for her transition, but they still also call her 'dad' after seeking permission from their father to do so.

Brody, on the other hand, appeared to be having more difficulties with use of pronouns, despite it being four years since Caitlyn announced she was transgender.

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Google Censors Video Exposing Google

Google-owned video platform YouTube took down a video from Project Veritas showing a senior employee at the company appearing to admit that the company plans to interfere in the next presidential election to stop Donald Trump.

The video, which is still available on the Project Veritas website featured undercover footage of a top Google employee, Jen Gennai, stating that the company shouldn’t be broken up because only they can prevent the “next Trump situation.”

Via the video:

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.

This corroborates other leaks from Google. Earlier this year, former Google software engineer Mike Wacker published emails appearing to show that a manager at the tech giant told one of their subordinates that the company had to stop “fake news” and “hate speech” because “that’s how Trump won.”

James O’Keefe urged viewers to download the video and repost it to ensure it could not easily be censored.

And last year, Breitbart News published confidential footage from inside Google showing the company’s head of global affairs, Kent Walker, stating his intention to make the populist-nationalist movement represented by Donald Trump a “blip” or “hiccup” in history.

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe reported on Twitter earlier today that the journalistic outlet received a privacy complaint on its YouTube videos. “Privacy” is the same excuse used by the tech giant for taking down a video about one of Veritas’ earlier stories, about anti-Christian bias at image platform Pinterest.

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Leftists are no longer liberal when it comes to free speech

These aren't your grandfather's liberals. That's the 75,000-foot view of the modern Left, which has declared its primary mission to suppress disfavored free speech. Two seemingly unrelated Supreme Court cases illustrate what has become the great battle of the early 21st century.

First, The Washington Free Beacon reports, "The basic details of Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck are mundane. New York City designated Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), a private nonprofit corporation, operator of a public access channel. Respondents DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Papoleto Melendez produced a film critical of MNN, which MNN agreed to air. The corporation subsequently removed their film and suspended the pair, claiming that they had made threats against MNN employees. Halleck and Melendez sued, claiming that MNN had violated their free speech rights under the First Amendment."

The broader implications are interesting. Does this provide a test case for how social media is governed under the First Amendment? In other words, can Facebook, Twitter, Google, et al. silence speech because they're private companies not subject to the First Amendment?

Without answering those questions just yet, let's turn to the more attention-getting Supreme Court case. The justices declined to hear the case of the Oregon bakers fined and put out of business for refusing to create a custom cake for a same-sex wedding. The Court did, however, give Melissa and Aaron Klein some help, vacating a lower-court ruling and the $135,000 fine against them while sending the case back for a rehearing in light of the SCOTUS decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Unfortunately, SCOTUS ruled fairly narrowly in that case — that Colorado officials were the ones unlawfully discriminating against the baker — leaving unanswered the fundamental question of whether a Christian baker or florist can be compelled to create works of art (speech) for weddings that violate their religious beliefs. Whether the lower court will read between the lines and reach the right conclusion on its second try is up for speculation.

On the one hand, we have private companies suppressing speech, while on the other we have private businesses compelled to make certain speech. In both, the authoritarian and totalitarian coercion is coming from one side: the Left. The specific First Amendment applications to private companies are not always clear, but what is plain as day is that the Left aims to constrain certain speech and compel other speech. In a nation built on the ideal of free speech, that's a dangerous trend.

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Free speech isn’t under threat. It just suits bigots and boors to suggest so

Or so Leftist journalist Martha Gill says.  Martha ia an Oxford graduate so one would expect a cogent argument from her -- but most of her article is just a sneer. I have however excerpted below the bit that is an argument of sorts. All she does in it however is erect a straw man.  She says, yes, people have been blocked from speaking but the views of those who do the blocking "are not reflective of the feelings of most students".

Big deal! What most students think is not the issue.  It is whether or not free speech is in fact blocked  -- and Martha admits that it is. But all that blocking of conservative speech just does not bother her.

Her second argument is that there is no absolute free speech.  There are always some discussions that societies ban.  But who is to decide what is banned?  She avoids that issue. Does the opinion of a few radical students suffice as a criterion?  Are they entitled to decide what political speech should be banned?  It would appear that the opinion of a coterie of radical students is indeed sufficient for her.

So she has not remotely made the argument in her heading above.  All she has done is reveal herself as a self-satisfied Leftist bigot with no committment to free speech


But is free speech really under threat? The first thing to say is that the scale of the problem in universities has been exaggerated. The practice of denying people speaking slots over their views has rightly caused concern, but every single instance has also attracted vast coverage in national papers, giving the impression of an epidemic. They are not reflective of the feelings of most students.

In 2018, a YouGov poll found British students were no keener to see speakers banned than the general public. In the US, a Knight Foundation survey found students were less likely than the overall population to support restrictions of free speech on campus, and Jeffrey Sachs, the US political scientist, found that there had been no “generational shift” in tolerance. There is also the fact that this handful of noisy zealots is only interested in a couple of topics. Minority rights, to be specific. They are unlikely to turn their sights, say, to physics, economics or music.

Most importantly, free speech defenders are muddled about what is happening. They see millennial snowflakes doing something dangerous: taking the first steps down a slope that begins with wanting to be warned when books include rape scenes and ends in communist Russia. But they forget that even in free countries speech has always been limited by social rules, not least the one about simple politeness.

If you are rude to a lecturer, for example, you might expect to be thrown out of a classroom. If you are rude about a minority group, they might try to stop you being invited to speak at their university. If you say something people don’t like, they might say something you don’t like back. Countries without free speech tend to have it written into law or otherwise enforced by the state. We are not quite there yet.

Free speech advocates also misunderstand the motivation of those who might want to shut down a debate: they see this as a surefire mark of intolerance. But some debates should be shut down. For public dialogue to make any progress, it is important to recognise when a particular debate has been won and leave it there.

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Attempt to shut down Christian campaigner backfires

In response to the shutdown, Christians dig deep to protect religious freedom

Donations are pouring in at $1,000 per minute for Israel Folau after the Australian Christian Lobby set up a new fundraising page for his legal battle against Rugby Australia.

The page, hosted on the lobby's website, has already been given more than $400,000 just hours after the star player's GoFundMe campaign was shut down.

Between 6am and 7am on Tuesday, the amount donated had doubled from around $40,000. By 10am it had reached around $400,000.

The new campaign was set up by ACL Managing director Martyn Iles who said his group will donate $100,000.

Hundreds of supporters, angry with GoFundMe, said they had doubled or tripled their donations this time around. 'We gave twice what we were going to give,' said one. 'I have now donated more than double the amount I had previously donated,' added another.

'Israel's case is our case if we want to live free and embrace our beliefs without fear of being marginalised or discriminated against,' Iles said.

He writes on the page: 'Recently the online fundraising platform GoFundMe shut down Israel Folau's legal defence fund and turned away hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

'On behalf of the Australian Christian Lobby, I have spoken to Israel Folau to let him know that ACL will be donating $100,000 to his legal defence, because it's right and it sets an important legal precedent.

'I have also offered to host his online appeal for funds here on our website and he has accepted our offer.

'All gifts you give on this web page will be deposited into a trust account to pay for Israel Folau's legal case.  'So, please give generously today to help Israel Folau stand for your religious freedom.'

The ACL, based in Canberra, has 135,000 members and aims to influence politics with Christian beliefs.

It comes after it was revealed GoFundMe shut down Folau's page while allowing a preacher to raise money to fund legal costs over anti-LGBTI comments.

Canadian Christian preacher David Lynn, who was arrested for allegedly making 'disparaging' comments has raised more than $50,000 on his still active page.

Folau launched his appeal for $3million on Tuesday and had raised more than $750,000 within six days. But the fundraising platform said on Monday it was pulling the campaign and refunding thousands of donors.

More than 95,000 people signed an online petition calling on GoFundMe to take down the page, noting its purpose was against the website's terms and conditions.

'After a routine period of evaluation, we have concluded that this campaign violates our terms of service,' GoFundMe Australia's regional manager Nicola Britton said in a statement.

'As a company, we are absolutely committed to the fight for equality for LGBTIQ+ people and fostering an environment of inclusivity.

'While we welcome GoFundMe's engaging in diverse civil debate, we do not tolerate the promotion of discrimination or exclusion,' she said. 

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"Husband" and "wife" are now incorrect

Or so it says in the doc below.



It is from the site of Griffith University, a university of no distinction in Brisbane.  See here.  They prattle on at great length about how kind they are to deviants of various knds

'Tools of the devil': Auction of Nazi war relics including swastika flags, a Knights Cross and a miniature Adolf Hitler figurine is slammed by a Jewish group

If they don't like the items, they don't have to buy them

An auction of Nazi war relics has been slammed by a Jewish group as an insult to those who suffered under Adolf Hitler's regime.

A Hitler figurine with a moving arm that performs the Nazi salute was among the items that sold under the hammer during the auction at Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Western Australia over the weekend.

Most of the items were World War II souvenirs collected by Australian soldiers at the time.

The items included a large Nazi flag featuring a Swastika and a Knight's Cross – one of the highest awards for German troops.

Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) chairman Dvir Abramovich has called the auction 'morally repugnant' and urged for action to stop the trade of these sort of items in Australia.

'Mainstreaming these tools of the devil that rightly belong in a museum, is a profound insult to the memory of the victims, to the survivors, and to the brave Australian soldiers who died in World War II to defeat Hitler's regime,' he told the ABC.

However, the likeliness of auction houses ceasing the sale of such items by choice looks unlikely as they can fetch millions of dollars.

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Apple News Rejects Actual Science, Disables The Western Journal’s Account for Daring To Question Popular Scientists’ Points of View

Last week, The Western Journal received notice that it was being banned from Apple News.

Apple News delivers news products to readers through their Apple iPhones, iPads, Macs and other devices.

Apple’s selection of publishers includes mainstream media sites like CNN, the BBC and The Wall Street Journal. Apple News also includes uber-left publications like Vox.

But despite permitting sites like CNN and Vox, Apple chose to ban The Western Journal.

When we heard that we’d been kicked off the platform, we reached out to Apple and asked why it had taken this action, given that The Western Journal had been included among Apple News’ publishers for years.

“Your channel has been disabled, and your content has been removed from Apple News,” Apple told us. “Your channel didn’t comply with our Apple News guidelines: Content advocates views overwhelmingly rejected by the scientific community.”

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The dreaded Golliwog again



A prominent Australian toy wholesaler says it is likely to discontinue supply of one of its most controversial dolls – the golliwog.

Golliwogs have continued to be sold in Australian shops despite them being widely seen as offensive in other western countries.

National sales manager for soft toy wholesaler Elka, Jan Johnco, said while the black-faced, red lipped dolls are an “innocent toy”, golliwogs offend people because they “don’t want to hear the truth about them”.

Ms Johnco noted that at one stage there were probably 30 suppliers at toy trade fairs selling the dolls, but now they have “run their time”.

“Now ‘gollies’ were in 30-odd years ago, and then they ran their cycle, I guess kind of like the yo-yo. The yo-yo might come back and it might never come back,” she said.

Golliwogs are still for sale around Australia, particularly in individual regional stores, but will be harder to find once Elka stops distributing them.

The Royal Adelaide Show last year was forced to apologise after complaints were received over the golliwog entries in the handicraft competition.

One regional NSW newsagent who spoke on the condition of anonymity has a large golliwog display in his shop window, but he worries increased attention could lead to vigilante action against his store.

“I could end up with a brick through the window by an idiot,” he said.

The retailer maintains that while one person a month walks into his shop to complain about the storefront, he sells up to five golliwogs a week.

“A lot of the people that buy them are elderly people because they remember them at their time. That’s what their mothers and grandmothers used to knit them.”

He believes people who rally against their sale are trying to alter Australia’s past.

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They are often made as a craft item so will not vanish.  They are fairly easy to make as a soft toy and many family-oriented women like making soft toys for children, including gollies

Pinterest now censoring

Our friend James O’Keefe and his team at Project Veritas have obtained a massive "Sensitive Terms List" from a Pinterest insider, which revealed the social media giant manipulates search results for "Bible verses," "Christian Easter," and other Christian terms. The terms on the list are marked as "brand unsafe."

What this means is such terms are removed from auto-complete, trending, recommended, etc. thus depressing the page views and connections of individuals whose posts include those terms.

The communications obtained from an industry whistleblower show media giant Pinterest also labeled pro-life activist organization ‘Live Action’ under its “pornography” category; claiming the group was distributing “misinformation related to conspiracies and anti-vaccination advice.”

The documents, which include product code, Slack messages, and internal policies, reveal terms and websites that Pinterest apparently censors.

In an interview with Project Veritas, the Pinterest insider who leaked the documents explained how the company censors pro-life and Christian content on the website. “I was pretty surprised,” said the Pinterest insider in an interview, when s/he discovered that pro-life group LiveAction.org was added to a “porn domain block list.” The insider explained that the “block list” was intended to be a collection of pornographic websites that Pinterest uses in order ensure that pornography cannot be posted. LiveAction.org is not a pornographic website, instead it is the web domain of a prominent pro-life advocacy group.

The insider explained that websites on a “domain block list” cannot be linked in posts made by users. While investigating, Project Veritas tried to post the LiveAction.org link on Pinterest and failed to do so, receiving an error message that read, “Sorry! Your request could not be completed.”

Project Veritas reviewed the list of websites from the “porn domain block list” and was able to confirm that along with LiveAction.org, websites like zerohedge.com, pjmedia.com, teaparty.org and other various conservative websites were also listed. The majority of the document lists pornographic websites.

Live Action is one of the leading pro-life groups educating the nation about abortion and the dignity of life, with over 3 million followers online. Their account is now permanently suspended according to reporting by Sean Hannity.

“We have more questions than answers about Pinterest’s censorship of Live Action and the pro-life message. Based on the evidence provided, it appears that Pinterest intentionally added ‘LiveAction.org’ to a ‘pornography’ blocklist in an effort to suppress our pro-life content from being shared on the platform,” said Live Action founder and President Lila Rose.

“Pinterest trying to secretly and dishonestly censor free expression is every Pinterester’s worst nightmare. We urge them to allow free expression on their platform and to stop censoring Live Action’s pro-life message,” she added according to a post on Hannity’s website.

In another document obtained by Project Veritas titled “A/C Privileged: Conspiracy Doc,” which the insider said lists various conspiracy theories that Pinterest monitors, Project Veritas noticed the listing of “David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood.” The description of the item reads, “Undercover at planned parenthood to ‘expose’ their sale of fetal remains.” The insider believes the record refers to the undercover video investigation conducted by David Daleiden which allegedly shows Planned Parenthood executives discussing the sale of fetal tissue for profit. Those undercover videos prompted various investigations and legal actions across the country. The Pinterest insider explained that the company removes conspiratorial content that they deem to be “harmful” from the platform.

Other internal communications from Pinterest show them referring to Jewish journalist and commentator Ben Shapiro and African-American political commentator and activist Candace Owens as "white supremacist.” Three days after the internal message, the terms “ben shapiro muslim” and “ben shapiro islam” were added to the “Sensitive Terms List.”

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Supreme Court Upholds Cross on Public Land

In a 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that a Bladensburg Peace Cross World War I Memorial on public land does not violate the Constitution. The American Humanist Association sued to remove the Bladensburg Cross, claiming it violated the separation of church and state.

The following statement is from CCV President Aaron Baer:

“Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed our nation’s first freedom: religious liberty. In a powerful 7-2 decision, the Court upheld what most Americans know to be true: religious displays on public lands do not violate the Constitution or represent an ‘establishment of religion.’

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First Amendment Protects Offensive Speech. Even by This Anti-Israel Movement

Sen. Marco Rubio last week criticized the anti-Israel movement known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, calling it “anti-Semitism disguised as economic policy and disguised as a free speech argument.”

The Florida Republican also called on Congress to pass a bill allowing the states to “go after” the movement, which considers Israel an “apartheid state” and argues in favor of various economic sanctions against Israel.

Rubio sets up a false dichotomy by saying the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement is masquerading as free speech. The movement may be anti-Semitic, economically wrongheaded, and offensive, but it’s still protected by the First Amendment.

The Constitution protects a person’s right to say offensive things. In Snyder v. Phelps, the Supreme Court held that speech on a matter of public concern is protected speech, even if that speech is offensive or outrageous.

The Supreme Court has exempted some forms of speech (for instance, obscenity, libel, and speech inciting violence) from First Amendment protection, but unless the movement crosses one of those lines, it should be protected.

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Censoring Conservatives

Facebook is reportedly monitoring the off-line behavior of its users in order to determine if they should be categorized as “hate agents.” If you speak at an event or say positive things about someone designated as a hate agent, that gets you points for your own hate score.

Some people may shrug and say, “Well, I don’t want to be associated with neo-Nazis and closet Klan members.” Of course not. But that’s not what we’re talking about. If those were the only groups being labeled as “hate agents,” this might be a useful service.

But as we regularly report to you, this is not the only thing that the leftists who dominate Big Tech and Big Media are labeling as “hate.”

Candace Owens, a black conservative, was penalized by Facebook as a “hate agent.” Why? Because she speaks out against what liberalism has done to minority communities.

My friend Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian, regularly speaks out against radical Islamism. She has been labeled a hate agent.

Pinterest banned a leading pro-life site as “pornography.”

As we have reported, leading progressive politicians are routinely labeling normal conservative views as “hate,” beyond the pale of public debate and discourse. The latest example was Kirsten Gillibrand, who compared believing in the sanctity of life to Holocaust denial or the advocacy of slavery.

Virtually no mainstream conservative can speak on university campuses without a social justice mob labeling them a hater and trying to shut them down.

Well guess what? That social justice mob now dominates Big Tech workplaces like Facebook, Google and Twitter.

We cannot permit these social media giants, which control today’s public square, to label normal conservativism as hate and, thereby, banish us from today’s public square. If they succeed in censoring us, we’ve lost the country

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NZ businessman, 44, is jailed for almost two years for sharing sickening footage of the Christchurch terror attack

Forbidden video!

A controversial businessman has been jailed for sharing footage of the devastating Christchurch terrorist attack.

Philip Neville Arps, 44, was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to two charges of distributing the chilling footage of the March 15 massacre.

A day after the massacre, Arps sent the video to an unknown person and requested for the footage to be modified with a 'kill count' as victims were shot.

He also requested cross-hairs be added as if the viewer was looking through a rifle scope before sending the unmodified footage to another 30 people, Stuff reported.

When interviewed by police, Arps said he thought the footage of the shooting was 'awesome'.

When questioned about the victims from the two mosques, he replied: 'I could not give a f**k, mate'.

Judge Stephen O'Driscoll said Arps had 'glorified' the horrific shooting in which 51 people were killed.

He said it was clear that Arps has 'strong and unrepentant views towards the Muslim community'.

Judge O'Driscoll called his actions a hate crime against the Muslim community.

A pre-sentence report found Arps has no remorse or empathy for anyone but himself and his family, the New Zealand Herald reported.

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Antisemitic jokes are OK in Britain

The Cambridge Union is at the centre of a racism row after footage emerged of an audience laughing at “flagrantly anti-Semitic” comments by the Malaysian prime minister.

Mahathir Mohamad, 93, who is known for anti-Jewish remarks, was met with enthusiastic laughter when he said: “I had some Jewish friends, very good friends. They are not like the other Jews, that’s why they are my friends.”

It came after he was asked about previous comments he has made regarding Jews and money at the world's oldest debating society on Sunday.

Footage of the event emerged online a day later, prompting a backlash from campaigners and a former union president.

Dr Mohamad's invitation to speak had already proved controversial, but Cambridge University said he should not be banned because they respect freedom of speech.

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Break Up the Social Media Companies to Protect Free Speech

If they want to target conservatives, unleash antitrust until they're too small to censor.

By PETER VAN BUREN

Donald Trump is preparing to unleash the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission as antitrust warriors against the tech giants. And good on him. Breaking up the monopolies on speech might save us—particularly anyone right-of-center—from encroaching online deplatforming, and preserve our ability to hear ideas outside echo chambers of bullied consensus.

The First Amendment doesn’t restrain censorship by private social media companies. Thus have progressives today reveled in their newfound power to enforce their own opinions through deplatforming. That only works because the platforms matter as near-monopolies; no one cares who gets kicked off MySpace. If you end the monopolies, you defang deplatforming.

What to do? Efforts to extend the First Amendment to entities like Facebook, arguing that they are the new public squares (seven of 10 American adults use a social media site), have been unsuccessful.

Trying to classify social media companies as “publishers” has also been unsuccessful because they insist that they are “platforms.” They say they are like the phone company, which lets you talk to a friend but exercises zero control over what you say.

Being a platform is desirable for Facebook and the others, as it allows them to have no responsibility for the content they print, no need to create transparent rules or appeals processes for deplatforming, and users have no legal recourse. Publishers, on the other hand, are responsible for what they print, and can be taken to court if it’s libelous or maliciously false.

Social media’s claim to be a platform and not a publisher is based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That section, however, was predicated on social media companies being neutral public forums in return for legal protections against being sued over content they present. Now Twitter wants it both ways—they want the protection of being a platform but the power to ideologically manipulate their content as publishers do.

Breaking through the platform-publisher question will require years of court battles. The growth of much of the web has been driven by the lack of responsibility for the content third parties chuck online. It is a complex situation that applies to everything from knitting site hosts to Nazi forums, and across international borders.

Yet social media entities’ control over speech is so significant that a more immediate solution is demanded. Google owns 90 percent of the search market, three quarters of mobile browsing and 70 percent of desktop, and, along with Facebook, 50 percent of online ads. YouTube dominates video. Facebook makes up two thirds of all social media, with Twitter holding down most of the rest. Large enough on their own, the platforms also work in concert. One bans, say, Alex Jones, and most of the others follow. And then whomever is last is chided into action by the mob and threatened with advertiser boycotts. Eventually, even Venmo and Paypal cut Jones off.

With legal and legislative solutions ineffectual for preserving free speech online, enter the major antitrust enforcement agencies of the executive branch. The Department of Justice is preparing to investigate Google’s parent company, Alphabet, while the Federal Trade Commission is doing the same for Facebook. The goal may be to break the tech giants into multiple smaller companies, as was done at the dawn of mass electronic communication in America.

The end of social media mega-companies, with none big enough to effectively silence any significant amount of speech, would be a clumsy fix for a problem the Founders never imagined—citizens demanding corporate censorship because they don’t like the results of an election. It is nowhere near the comprehensive solution of an expanded First Amendment that a democracy should grant itself. But in a world where progressives fail to understand the value of free speech, it may provide enough of a dike to hold back the waters until reason again takes hold.

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‘Harmful’ gender stereotypes are banned in British adverts

Adverts that perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes, such as men struggling with household chores or girls being less academic than boys, will be banned from today.

The advertising watchdog said that the new rules did not mean a ban on all gender stereotypes, only those likely to cause harm or serious or widespread offence.

Scenarios likely to be problematic would include a man with his feet up while a woman takes sole responsibility for cleaning up a family’s mess or a woman unable to park a car. However, adverts that depict women cleaning or men doing DIY will still be considered acceptable.

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Trump Gives Full Support: ‘All In’ on Banning the Burning of US Flag

President Donald Trump threw his full support Saturday behind a Republican senator’s proposed constitutional amendment that allows Congress to ban the burning of the United States flag.

Trump praised the amendment on Twitter, saying he was “all in” on the proposal and calling it a “no brainer.”

“All in for Senator Steve Daines as he proposes an Amendment for a strong BAN on burning our American Flag. A no brainer!” Trump said.

Sen. Steve Daines of Montana and Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas — both Republicans — introduced the amendment on Friday, which was Flag Day, as The Hill pointed out.

“The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States,” the proposed amendment reads.

Daines released a statement on Friday, saying, “Our United States flag is a timeless symbol of liberty that tells the story of America, the story of our enduring pursuit of freedom.”

“Remembering the sacrifices of all who carried its colors into battle, our nation should always render the flag the honor and dignity it is due,” Daines added.

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This would be a popular amendment so could well pass

Australia: Campus bureaucrats prove timid friends of free speech

The government is mounting a campaign to resurrect freedom of expression in Australian universities. Throughout history, academics have been punished for questioning fashionable orthodoxy. In the 21st-century West, they enforce it by silencing dissent and ostracising dissenters.

The government is taking a fresh approach to liberating higher education from its orthodox rut. It commissioned an independent review into free speech on campus led by University of Western Australia chancellor Robert French. Major recommendations include that each higher education provider has “a policy that upholds freedom of speech and academic freedom”. A model code is recommended to extend the principle of freedom to all forms of expression, including art and music.

The government is emphasising the importance of freedom of expression and the case made by French across 300 pages is difficult to refute. Lest it be seen as meddling with university autonomy, the Coalition has made the model code voluntary. It is a leap of faith and, I believe, an error of judgment.

Tehan has started his campaign to resurrect freedom on campus by trying to reason with chancellors and vice-chancellors. He has assured sector leaders that the government will protect their autonomy while advocating for greater accountability in respect of core democratic freedoms.

However, there is no financial incentive for vice-chancellors to challenge faculty orthodoxy and no punishment for allowing it to continue. And some university executives have been involved in what many perceive as the punishment of dissenting speech.

After the Federal Court upheld physics professor Peter Ridd’s right to intellectual freedom, the management of James Cook University issued a statement. It claimed that Ridd had “engaged in serious misconduct, including denigrating the university and its employees and breaching confidentiality directions regarding the disciplinary processes”. On the face of it, Ridd’s major transgression was to call into question orthodox environmentalist beliefs. If the Federal Court cannot convince university leaders about the importance of protecting intellectual freedom, who can?

The government is facing a great challenge in trying to liberate free speech from the chains of PC orthodoxy on campus. There will be no lasting change to freedom of expression in Australian universities until it is legislated at a federal level with quantifiable targets that are tied to funding.

The principal reason to protect free speech on university campuses is to nourish democracy for generations to come. Freedom of speech is a means and an end. It is the foundation of public reason that makes human progress possible. We must defend it or we will lose the battle for democracy.

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The Meghan Murphy situation proves that Twitter is not a free speech zone

In an unsurprising court decision, Twitter prevailed in another lawsuit from a permanently banned user. Meghan Murphy, an articulate and prominent feminist advocate, lost her account for violating “misgendering” policy which has changed what they deem to be “hate speech.”

Murphy opposes the compelled speech which would force her to refer to what she calls “trans-identified males” using their self identified pronouns.

The question of whether or not “hate” is in the eye of the beholder or the mind of the speaker is part of the current debate. Murphy’s position has sought to identify biological facts about the differences between genders and the danger of pretending those differences don’t exist.

Right now it is a social fact that, despite employing the logical fallacy of argumentum ad populum, Twitter will make choices based on which group of people causes them more fear. And it is a legal fact that they have the right to make that choice.

While Twitter’s right to choose who they allow on their website legally remains within their discretion, they lost the right to call themselves a venue for free speech. Advocates for free speech never prove their mettle until they are willing to protect speech they loathe.

The court decision, shutting down Meghan Murphy’s lawsuit against Twitter for breach of contract, did not determine whether or not Murphy was guilty of hate speech. It only determined that Twitter was permitted to ban her from their website.

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Push for free speech in New Zealand

It's feared David Seymour's proposal to change parts of the Human Rights Act would do more harm than good.

The ACT leader wants to decriminalise language that is threatening, abusive or insulting.

"The idea you could be potentially punished for saying something that was offensive or insulting... is something that worries a lot of Kiwis," he told Newshub Nation on Saturday.

Seymour's solution is to repeal a part of the Human Rights Act which protect against "threatening, abusive or insulting" language "likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons... on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group of persons".

He also wants inciting racial disharmony to no longer be a crime, nor for it to be offensive in public.

Matthew Tukaki, head of the Māori Council, says "irrelevant" Seymour's views are dated.

"This inference that it's okay to give licence to people who would think it acceptable to call me the N-word, or 'black something something', it's not acceptable in today's New Zealand," he told Newshub.

"I am sick and tired, as a Māori, of having to put up with people suggesting that this is a debate that we need to have or should have - that we should somehow listen, and somehow find an excuse for why some people call me the N-word," said Tukaki, calling Seymour's Bill a "protection racket for those who think it's their right to call me a n****r".

"I say to David Seymour if you were black and someone called you a n****r, or a fat black bastard or a black c**t, you’d want to have some protection and right of legal challenge."

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So people should be prevented from telling me what they think of me?  A dubious proposition.

Alabama’s Stand for Free Speech Sets an Example for the Nation

State mottos should be built to last, and Alabama’s lawmakers just applied theirs—Audemus jura nostra defendere or “We dare defend our rights”—to one of the most contentious and visible issues of debate today: free speech on college campuses.

Last week, Gov. Kay Ivey approved a proposal to protect the expressive rights of everyone who is part of a university community.

The proposal forbids so-called free speech zones, instructs university officials to be prepared to issue consequences to students who violate others’ right to listen and be heard, and assigns public university governing boards the task of writing an annual report on free speech-related incidents.

Alabama’s proposal is the latest in a string of actions by state lawmakers around the U.S. to resist the efforts by on- and off-campus protesters to intimidate and bully students, faculty, and administrators by disrupting campus activities. In the last three years, policymakers in Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin have enacted similar proposals.

These responses to campus censorship have key provisions in common that distinguish them from other attempts to restore the pursuit of truth in the academy.

The measures call for public colleges to adopt principles similar to what is known as the “Chicago Statement,”  which says schools must not act to protect students from ideas with which they may disagree. More than 60 colleges around the country have adopted this statement.

Second, all public areas of campus must be considered “free speech zones.” Universities around the country have been criticized for limiting expressive activity to small, isolated areas of campus.

Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., cited these zones in a resolution condemning campus speech codes that he introduced earlier this year.

The American Civil Liberties Union also opposes these zones and said, “While it may sound like these zones are designed to promote speech, they actually do the opposite by confining political expression to designated areas, often in out-of-the-way locations on campus.”

Third, public college officials must be prepared to issue consequences to individuals—including students—that block someone else’s attempt to be heard.

A group that staged a protest in opposition to a guest lecturer’s remarks at a University of Wisconsin event told reporters this portion of the Wisconsin Board of Regents’ operating policy prevented them from disrupting the event.

In Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, students accused of violating someone else’s speech rights must be made aware of any hearings on their case and have the right to find representation.

Anyone lawfully present on a public college campus should be allowed to demonstrate there, as long as those activities do not interfere with others’ attempts to listen or be heard.

Students at Evergreen State College in Washington state occupied administrative buildings in the spring of 2017 and disrupted campus events for weeks without sanctions.

Student discipline came months later, after the school year ended, but by then, the damage was done. School officials had to temporarily close campus and delay graduation.

Mike Paros, professor at Evergreen, wrote in Quillette, “Marginalized students seeking justice for themselves and others will realize that they deserve a school where ideas can be exchanged freely.”

The new Alabama proposal is designed to protect learning environments and allow the free exchange of opinions. Evergreen’s example may be extreme, but not by much.

Two public colleges in Alabama made the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s list of worst colleges for free speech. Last November, the College Media Association censured the University of North Alabama after the school blocked the student newspaper’s access to information about a public employee.

Alabama lawmakers took the opportunity to defend free speech on campus and governed according to its state motto. Now, college governing boards and school officials must do the same.

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Boss claims to have fired worker for calling transgender colleague ‘it’

A US man has revealed why he decided to fire an employee over the use of a single “disrespectful” word, which insulted a fellow colleague.

The boss, from Tallahassee in Florida, claimed one of his workers had referred to a transgender colleague as “it” — despite being warned against it.

The worker allegedly also underwent sensitivity training where it was explained why “misgendering” someone — or referring to them by the incorrect pronoun — was so insulting.

However, the man persisted — until his boss stepped in.

The man’s account is now private, and it is not known what industry the alleged incident occurred within, although the tweets have attracted an outpouring of support.

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Je suis un hypocrite

Australian Leftists want freedom of the press for Leftists only

How pleasing and surprising it was to see so many of the commentariat suddenly in favour of freedom of the press. Some of us had been warning for the last few years it was being compromised by executive and legislative censorship, but our progressive betters were at best indifferent to or contemptuous of such protests. But last week's "raid" on the ABC by the Australian Federal Police led to a mass outcry among the intelligentsia. Aunty had been violated.

"An attack on the press for doing their job is an attack on our democracy," tweeted Greens leader senator Richard Di Natale.

How noble. I have been thinking of designing a hashtag for such converts - how does #JeSuisFullofIt sound, Senator? In March Di Natale revealed his inner tinpot when he told his admiring Melbourne inner-city audience of his plans to silence conservative journalists.

"We're going to call out the hate speech that's been going on," he said. "We're going to make sure that we've got laws that regulate our media so that people like Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones and Chris Kenny - and I could go on and on and on. If they want to use hate speech to divide the community then they're going to be held to account."

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young labelled the AFP's actions "an attack on the press for doing their job" and "an attack on those who tell the truth".

Compare her purported principles to her reaction in 2011 when a Federal Court found Herald-Sun journalist Andrew Bolt had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in questioning the motives of light-skinned Australians who identified as indigenous. "Diddums Andrew Bolt," she tweeted, "Diddums". Proving this inanity was not a mere case of spontaneity, Hanson-Young repeated these puerile sentiments in a letter to this newspaper for good measure.

"Without a strong media that is fearless . our country will be weaker," lamented ABC broadcaster Patricia Karvelas. "It is in everyone's interests to know the truth". I agree entirely, but I was reminded of the reaction to Herald-Sun cartoonist Mark Knight's excellent depiction of tennis player Serena Williams's US Open tantrum last year.

Knight had spoken the truth in depicting Williams as a spoiled brat and a bully. It resulted in his suffering appalling online abuse. He was called a "white supremacist", he and his family received death threats, and he was forced to leave town for a week while he was protected by security guards. The Australian Press Council subsequently dismissed complaints about Knight's cartoon, finding that its publication was in the public interest.

So did Karvelas fiercely defend Knight's right (and obligation) to speak the truth? "Main lesson from today is that listening is always a good start to building a respectful and civilised community," she tweeted the day it was published. "If people of colour are telling you they find depictions of them hurtful and offensive that matters". So much for a "strong media".

The AFP's actions, claimed ABC broadcaster Wendy Harmer, amounted to a "chilling effect", and "one that goes beyond just media outlets". Welcome to the free press cause, Wendy, albeit it has taken you a few years to get here.

It was a very different Harmer who on 15 December 2014 tweeted "Andrew Bolt's blog is a forum for vile hate speech. A blight on this nation . Get rid of him!!" That was the same day the Lindt Caf‚ siege began at the hands of an Islamist terrorist. Two innocent hostages would later die. It says it all that Harmer was preoccupied with "hate speech" and silencing a conservative columnist.

Inexplicably journalists these days play a leading role in not only suppressing politically incorrect statements, but also in calling for retribution against those who perpetuate them. Take for example former Wallabies player Israel Folau, whose $4 million contract was terminated by Rugby Australia last month after he twice posted on Instagram that homosexuals were destined for hell unless they repented.

In the 13-month period between Folau's first Instagram indiscretion and his eventual sacking, Sydney Morning Herald columnist and sports journalist Peter FitzSimons wrote at least 11 columns about Folau. They are not what you would call reporting or objective analysis. Rather, they were shrill denunciations. "Israel Folau has to go, and will go," he wrote in April. "Quick. Clean. Gone. At least until such times as he repents." FitzSimons was also quick to dismiss Folau's right to free speech. "While he has broad freedom of speech, he has no freedom from consequences," he wrote.

You may recall former SBS sports journalist Scott McIntyre, whose employment in 2015 was terminated over a number of provocative tweets on Anzac Day that vilified the WWI and WWII diggers and those who commemorated them. "Wonder if the poorly-read, largely white, nationalist drinkers and gamblers pause today to consider the horror that all mankind suffered," he sneered.

So what was FitzSimons' reaction? "I disagree as passionately with those comments as I do with his ludicrous sacking for making them," he wrote. There's that hashtag again.

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Australia: TV host Sam Armytage slams Kmart's apology after customers were banned from using Christian terms in its photo booths - but 'Islam' and 'Koran' had the all clear

Someone in Kodak's IT department will have been responsible for this -- knowing full-well that it would be a provocation

Sunrise host Samantha Armytage has slammed Kmart after photo printing kiosks at its stores appeared to ban Christian terms. Armytage directed criticism at the retail giant during the Thursday morning segment after the store blamed the error on a system glitch. 'Kmart has come out this morning and said it was a technical glitch, that is rubbish,' she said.

When customers tried to caption photos with the forbidden words, a message came up on screen saying 'profanity has been detected in text and substituted with ****'.

Words such as Jesus, church, Bible and Christian used in captions were deemed to be profanities and replaced with asterisks, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The words Jewish and Allah were also banned but mosque, Islam and Koran were not.

By Thursday morning the error had been fixed, though Armytage invited guests to her show such as social commentator Jane Caro to weigh in on the incident.

The kiosks are run by Kodak which recently installed software to detect profanities.

Kodak sales and marketing manager Gavin Wulfsohn said the list of profanities was wrong and would be fixed.

A spokesman for Kmart said: 'We would like to sincerely apologise for this system error, which has been rectified overnight. It in no way reflects our views as a business.

'At Kmart, we support diversity and inclusiveness irrespective of race, religion, age, gender, ethnicity, ability, appearance or attitude, and we want our teams and stores to reflect the communities in which we operate'.

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BBC’s New Policy: Reporters Banned From Calling A ‘Terror Attack’ A ‘Terror Attack’

In another example of how the world has gone nuts the BBC is about to ban reporters use of the words “terror attack” to describe…terror attacks.

The Federalist Papers reports:

Apparently the new policy will only allow reporters to describe the time, place and what happened without referring it to a terrorist attack, as the Daily Mail reports:

The controversial edict means that the BBC will no longer use the phrase ‘terror attack’ to describe the massacres at London Bridge or Manchester Arena, as the corporation did when the atrocities occurred.

Reporters would describe them as the London Bridge van attack or the Manchester Arena bomb attack instead.

But yesterday, MPs and experts accused the broadcaster of ‘failing in its public service duty’.

David Green, a former Home Office adviser and chief executive of the think tank Civitas, said: ‘If they don’t want to use that [the word terror] then they’re failing in their public service duty which is to be clear and accurate.

This has got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard of, and that says a lot.

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Now doctors are No Platforming people

Medical censors now. Julia Hartley-Brewer’s disinvitation is a new low for the culture wars.

RADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer has been disinvited from the Royal College of General Practitioners’ (RCGP) annual conference. Just when you thought the culture war couldn’t permeate more areas of modern life, we now have doctors No Platforming journalists.

A petition, signed, at the time of writing, by 749 medical practitioners, accuses Hartley-Brewer of expressing ‘views that are highly controversial regarding immigration’, including that ‘she could not see anything in [Enoch Powell’s] “Rivers of Blood” speech that he had got wrong’. One doctor wrote that he would leave the RCGP if Hartley-Brewer spoke at the conference, as it would be ‘platforming someone who defends fascism’.

The RCGP caved. According to Hartley-Brewer, writing in the Spectator, RCGP chair Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard emailed her to rescind the invitation and trotted out the classic ‘free speech, but’ line: ‘We believe and uphold the principles of free speech… however, I cannot ignore the strength of feeling among my own membership.’

Hartley-Brewer, a vocal Brexit supporter, says this is a politically motivated smear job. And she’s clearly right. The people pushing the petition are a mix of Corbynistas and Stop Brexit zealots who like to sound off on Twitter about ‘racist’, ‘brownshirt’ Brexiteers. For her part, she points out that the tweet, from 2016, wasn’t defending Powell as such, but rather suggested that what he predicted came to pass.

But it is an act of tremendous, shameful bad faith to say that Hartley-Brewer is a racist because she takes the view on Powell that she does. Nothing she has ever uttered in public could even remotely be considered racist. Which is probably why her critics seem to be relying on one by-the-by Twitter discussion to smear her.

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More on the speech that you must not say anything good about here

This isn’t anti-fascism – this is mental

One of the tragedies of modern political times is the degradation of the word anti-fascism.

This once proud tradition, encompassing the leftists who went to Spain to fight Franco and the activists who chased the National Front out of Asian neighbourhoods in the Seventies and Eighties, is now the butt of jokes.

It’s become a byword for hysterical left-wing intolerance, evoking images of scrawny students shouting at Jacob Rees-Mogg or chubby, bearded Corbynistas milkshaking Nigel Farage.

And the Trump protests in London yesterday proved this bad rep is now – sadly – thoroughly deserved.

In a viral video clip, a group of anti-Trump protesters and anti-fascist activists – all straight out of central casting – surround a Trump supporter and shout ‘Nazi scum’ at him.

One woman, in a ‘Fuck Trump’ t-shirt, screams right in his face. A man in sunglasses, hoody and medical mask – looking like he’s from the germaphobe division of black bloc – squares off to him. Someone throws a milkshake at the Trumper and a scuffle ensues.

He’s pushed away as someone with a cut-glass accent says ‘you’re behaving as badly as he is’ in the background.

No, not quite. And unless someone can show me that the Trump fan was sounding off about Jews or personally grabbing pussies before this incident ensued (I’m happy to recant if so), this looks like what it looks like: a bunch of idiots screaming at someone because he, along with millions of Americans, happens to like the US president.

Speaking to the Sun, the man, who didn’t want to be named, said Trump was the ‘democratically elected president of the free world’ and that he went down to the protests because he ‘just wanted a debate with the sensible left’. ‘I never wanted it to get violent, but I wasn’t going to be intimidated’, he added.

Now, it is worth saying that he did also accuse the protesters of being fascists. In a longer clip, posted by LBC, you can see him arguing with a white guy in dreadlocks – like I said, central casting – and calling him a fascist, before someone nicks his MAGA hat and things start to get physical.

But let’s not indulge in ‘both sides’-ism here. The ‘who’s the real fascist?’ defence, made by Trumpers against intolerant protesters, may be lame and inaccurate, and it undoubtedly contributes to the dangerous watering down of the meaning of that historically loaded word. But they didn’t start it, did they? Most of them probably don’t even mean it.

Meanwhile, one of the most striking things about the ‘Trump is Hitler’ argument is how thoroughly mainstream it is on the liberal-left. This is not just about idiots on the streets or flinging tweets. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan essentially made the same accusation in the pages of the Observer on Sunday.

We shouldn’t extrapolate too much from this one incident. Shit happens when protesters clash. People get a bit carried away, high on righteousness and lukewarm cans. The ‘Fuck Trump’ woman, in a since deleted tweet, even apologised for her part in it.

But it did all feel like the culture war made flesh. There was something unmistakably 2019 about it. And it wasn’t the only incident to come out of yesterday’s protesters, either.

At Trafalgar Square, a group of Trump supporters had to be barricaded in a Wetherspoons by police for their own safety. Elsewhere, another Trump supporter – an elderly man! – was pushed to the floor by a group of protesters, an antifa flag flying in the background.

Anti-fascism used to mean risking life and limb to fight and kill actual fascists, dodging blows and bullets to defend minorities and freedom. Now it means screaming in right-wingers’ faces and rugby tackling men old enough to be your grandfather.

This isn’t radical. It’s not even rational. And it undermines the historical specificity of European fascism. It does a disservice to the millions who perished at the hands of fascists in the 20th century, and it does a disservice to those who fought back so bravely.

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Australia: CFMMEU’s John Setka set to be expelled from Labor party after attack on Rosie Batty (?)

John Setka is undoubtedly a bully and a thug.  In his union role he has been that for many years.  And nobody on the Left has ever complained about that.  So how come a single sentence spoken by him has suddenly brought him undone?  We don't even know the whole sentence that he spoke. Only a few words from it have ever been reported.  See below.

It's hard to judge in the face of such heavily edited information but the irony is that what Setka said is probably right.  Bettina Arndt has been tireless in pointing to evidence that "men" in general have been blamed for the misdeeds of the few domestic abusers that Rose Batty and others talk  about.  Ms Batty has definitelty cast a wide net in attributing blame for domestic violence. "Masculinity" itself now seems to be seen by many as a fault.

So a situation has arisen where men are automatically presumed guilty in response to an accusation by a woman. Men have gone to jail in response to entirely false and uncorroborated allegations by women. If that is not a reduction in men's rights, I do not know what would be. Men have largely lost the presumption of innocence, a most basic right.

So why is Setka under attack for what he said?  I think it is because of the close alliance betweeen Feminists and the Left.  Setka can say and do anything at all that will antagonize business and conservatives but he must not ding women.


Anthony Albanese has moved to have John Setka, Victorian secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, expelled from the ALP after his derogatory remarks about anti-domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty.

Setka was reported as telling a meeting of the CFMMEU national executive Batty’s work had led to men having fewer rights. He later claimed his comments had been taken out of context.

Albanese told a news conference: “John Setka does not belong in our party, because of the views that he holds”.

The opposition leader said at the next meeting of the party’s national executive he would move for Setka’s expulsion. Meanwhile, he had asked the national executive committee to suspend Setka immediately.

Former opposition leader Bill Shorten was close to the CFMMEU, sometimes relying on it for numbers.

Albanese spoke with Batty on Monday. She had indicated she was disappointed Setka’s comments distracted from the AO she was awarded in the Queen’s Birthday honours.

“Rosie Batty is a great campaigner against family violence and the idea that she should be denigrated by someone like John Setka is completely unacceptable to me as leader of the Australian Labor Party and I don’t want him in our party. It’s that simple,” Albanese said.

SOURCE  

YouTube vs free speech

Pro-homosexual voices have almost a monopoly on public comment so it is bordering on the totalitarian to shut down one of the few voices on the other side, which is what we see below.

And Crowder, the censored voice, actually said nothing about homosexuality in general at all.  He just referred to one person as "queer", which is only marginally "incorrect" these days. So the censorship has risen to a point of hysteria.

The fact that homosexuality was illegal until a few decades ago tells us that there is a large and diverse body of opinion out there on the subject. There are undoubtedly many people out there who still find it distasteful.

I personally think that homosexuality has been glorified in recent years and that glorifying it is just as obnoxious as making it illegal

What I would like to see is tolerance of different opinions on the subject -- but homosexuals and their allies hardly seem to know the meaning of tolerance.  They preach it on occasions but it is only their own view that they in fact tolerate, which is no tolerance at all

I would be happiest of all if I never heard about homosexuality  again but that is not allowed it seems

As it is, homosexuals have become the royalty of social media, whom none dare criticize.  It's a situation just waiting for President Trump to exploit to his advantage.  He's pretty critical of social media already


A spat between two rival YouTubers on opposing sides of the Culture Wars is not normally news. But the clash between right-wing commentator Steven Crowder and Vox video journalist Carlos Maza has hit the headlines, because it has led to a tightening of YouTube’s content policies, adding further restrictions to what can and cannot be posted on that platform.

Last week, Maza edited together some of Crowder’s videos in which he makes fun of Maza’s ethnicity, sexuality and voice. Crowder refers to Maza as a ‘lispy queer from Vox’, a ‘gay Mexican’ and ‘Mr Gay Vox’. There’s no doubt that Crowder is obnoxious, bigoted and infantile. However, being insulted by your political opponents is par for the course in public life and should not be grounds for having them censored. Initially, YouTube appeared to recognise this.

When Maza tweeted the video as part of a Twitter thread, it went viral. YouTube responded by saying it had reviewed the videos in question and determined that ‘individually, the flagged videos did not violate our Community Guidelines’. In a tweet, it stated: ‘Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site.’

With this refusal to censor Crowder’s videos, YouTube found itself accused of inaction and of enabling hatred towards gay people and ethnic minorities. Maza tweeted to his followers: ‘You have to raise hell. Use their platform against them. Hold them accountable for their neglect.’ And raise hell they did.

The next day, under considerable pressure from Twitter and the liberal press, YouTube reversed its stance. It demonetised Crowder’s channel – preventing the raising of money through advertising – and removed some of his older videos. But despite his successful scalp, Maza, a long-time proponent of censorship and de-platforming, was not satisfied. ‘Crowder’s revenue stream isn’t from YouTube ads. It’s from selling merch and “Socialism Is For Fags” shirts to millions of loyal customers, that YouTube continues to drive to his channel’, he tweeted. Only Crowder’s total expulsion from the internet or the removal of his means of making money would be enough to satisfy the new self-appointed censors.

In order to justify its volte face, YouTube pushed out a new hate-speech policy. Given the speed of its u-turn, the policy was presumably cobbled together on the hoof. In a blog post announcing the changes, YouTube vowed to tackle ‘extremist content’ and to remove any video which promotes or seeks to justify ‘discrimination, segregation or exclusion’.

As is to be expected with such a wide-ranging definition of ‘hate’, obnoxious shock jocks like Crowder were not the only ones caught up in it. For instance, Ford Fischer who runs the news channel News2Share, received an email from YouTube telling him that his channel had been demonetised under the new rules. He started his channel in 2014, uploading raw footage of the Black Lives Matter movement. But his channel was demonetised and his revenue was cut for hosting footage of the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Fischer told Newsweek that he had no intention of promoting the alt-right: ‘The work is meant as raw footage, so people can critique and analyse the tactics and things being said.’

Another account to be terminated was that of the award-winning history teacher, Scott Allsopp. Allsopp’s channel violated the new rules because his GCSE tutorials on the Second World War featured clips of Adolf Hitler’s speeches and other Nazi propaganda. YouTube has since reinstated Allsopp’s channel, but its initial action shows that in future it is likely to censor first and ask questions later.

YouTube’s response to the spat between Crowder and Maza illustrates how chaotic and opaque internet censorship has become. New, wide-ranging content rules are being devised and implemented at the behest of journalists and the Twittermob. The consequences can be far-reaching, with many innocent users being silenced. If Silicon Valley continues down this censorious path, the free, open internet will soon be a distant memory.

SOURCE 

University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee is one of the latest schools with a free-speech imbroglio

Joel Berkowitz was outraged when a University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee student held a sign bearing a swastika and a hateful message directed at students celebrating Israel’s independence: “Gas,” the sign said.

But Berkowitz, who runs the school’s Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies, was also angered with the university’s response. He felt a statement from the school’s chancellor, Mark Mone, defending the student’s right to free speech failed to condemn strongly enough the hateful message.

“The University’s initial response was shockingly weak,” Berkowitz wrote on his campus blog.

And so began a conversation, in private and in public, with echoes on college campuses throughout the nation. College administrators are searching for ways to balance First Amendment rights with the right of students and faculty to feel secure. They’re not always finding the right mix.

“They weren’t even denouncing a swastika in the middle of campus,” Berkowitz said in an interview.

Yet Berkowitz, whose family includes Holocaust victims and survivors, acknowledged the difficulty of honoring the principles of open discourse and respecting dissent that pushes the limits of decency. Shouldn’t limits be placed on speech so repugnant — gas the Jews — that it implies a threat of violence, he wonders?

“No one that I’m talking to is saying that we should ride roughshod over the First Amendment,” Berkowitz said. “But there are discussions about what are the limits of free speech. They are not absolute.”

The university’s chancellor has issued two public statements since the May 6 protest, while more than 1,400 people have signed an online petition urging the school to expel the sign-holding student. Efforts to reach that student for comment through email and social media accounts were not successful.

SOURCE 

Snowflake teachers in Britain

When I was a kid we had derogatory names for most of our teachers:  "Deadbeat", "Blood Pressure" etc.

A secondary school head teacher has demanded police investigate an Instagram account that was set up to abuse his staff. Jonathan Osborn called on Essex Police to probe whether the Instagram account mocking teachers at King Edmund School constitutes a hate crime.

The account had 300 followers before it was deleted and has been branded a 'personal attack' on staff at the Rochford academy.  

A source close to the school said: 'Students created an Instagram page dedicated to mocking staff through posts.

'More than 300 individuals were following the page before it was taken down.

'Some posts suggested inappropriate behaviour from teachers, while others were poking fun at the authoritative nature of others.

'The school has taken the view that this is a personal attack on the school and its staff.'

Essex Police confirmed they are investigating the allegations.

SOURCE 

Can you REALLY say that at work? The common phrases deemed inappropriate for the office revealed - including 'love', 'mate' and 'darl'

This article refers to Australian customs but the American situation is similar in most cases.  For instance, where Australians and some English say "mate", Americans would say "bud" or "buddy". Where Australians say "Darl", some Americans say "Hun" and some English say "Hen".  Even such extremely common usages are coming under critical scrutiny

A psychologist has revealed some of the common words used in a workplace and why they are deemed inappropriate in most office spaces.

Jim Bright, who specialises in organisation psychology, spoke to the ABC's Phillip Clark about the ways we chat to our coworkers and why it's getting easier to offend people.

'I think people have always been offended by sexiest behaviour and camp jokes but we're now in more of a position to speak up about it,' a caller said on the Nightlife show.

So what is and isn't okay to be saying within the confines of your job? 

Men calling their female colleagues 'love'. While this is not 'wrong', particularly if the woman herself uses the phrase back, it should be said with caution. 'It can be patronising and belittling when used in certain contexts, namely if there is animosity between the two colleagues,' Mr Bright said.

The word is also very personal in nature and can be seen as more than just a friendly term of endearment. While some people will enjoy being called 'love' you should read the room before engaging with the word.

What else is inappropriate in the workplace?

* Touching the shoulders of a person, male or female

* Hugging someone as you enter a meeting room

* Calling women 'Sheilas' - unless of course that is someone's name

* Jokes of a sexual nature

Calling someone 'mate'. This is a term used most often when someone can't remember a name but ultimately should be avoided in a corporate setting. 'I've heard it used as quite a sledge on the cricket field so I think it can be said in a harsh and friendly manner,' Mr Bright said.

Instead of saying 'mate', try to talk to the person until they either mention their name, put on a name badge or are called using their official moniker. 

Talking to the elderly in like they're a child and using 'darl'  While some may see it as a term of respect, older people find it condescending and see it as though they are being labelled like a child. It might make you seem more intelligent than they are by using the word 'darl' but it has the potential to hurt their feelings. Instead avoid all manner of 'darl' or 'sweetie' options and call them by their first name.

Referring to a group of mixed-gender people 'guys'. Using 'guys' as a collective word to describe both men and women can be deemed a sexist remark in formal settings, although more colloquial places like the classroom can be suitable. Presuming everyone is okay with being called a 'guy', 'man' or 'bloke' is disrespectful and this type of language should be traded for 'can you all'.

To be safe, avoid any term that singles out one gender. 

SOURCE  

Stupid critics slam a mother over her eye preference



As you can see if you look, the mother has hazel eyes, due to what geneticists call incomplete dominance.  It arises because she has genes for both blue and brown eyes and both come out, giving eyes that are halfway between blue and brown.  It is rather rare and can be regarded as attractive. 

And the mother thinks they are attractive too. So the mother was hoping that her baby would have "pretty" eyes like hers. But that is actually rare.  More usual is for a parent with hazel eyes to have BOTH blue eyed and brown eyed children.

But when the baby was born with blue eyes the mother was a little disappointed and said so. She got a lot of flak for saying that.  It appears to have been taken as a "racist" utterance.

But that is absurd. Blue eyes are part of the Nordic look, which is the worldwide beauty ideal. So blue eyes would not normally be disappointing.  It is clear therefore that she was simply wishing for the baby to look like her -- not anything racial. And it is aways a great topic among parents to say which parent a child looks like -- so it is clear that the woman was just being a normal mother in commenting on her baby's looks


A mum who shared her birthing video has gone viral for all the wrong reasons after fans noticed something “weird” with the special moment she held her baby for the first time.

Biannca Prince, who shares a YouTube channel with her husband Damien called “The Prince Family”, has been slammed for making some rather unusual comments when she first held daughter Nova Grace.

Instead of declaring her bub to be beautiful, as arguably most new mums would, Biannca seemed to be more interested in the colour of little Nova’s eyes. “She’s going to have brown eyes for sure …” the 22-year-old said, just moments after her baby was placed into her arms.

But as Nova’s eyes opened for the first time, Biannca is surprised to see they’re a shade of blue. “I thought you were going to have pretty eyes,” she quips, as she takes the details of her newborn in.

Her husband quickly responds, defending their baby. “She do have pretty eyes,” he claps back. The nurses too quickly tell Biannca little Nova is “beautiful”.

But while it was just a tiny moment in the 37-minute video, it has gone viral after one of their 3.6 million subscribers shared it on Twitter. “Imagine being one hour old and your parents are obsessing over our skin/eye colour,” the tweet read.

Reasons for the outrage were different, with some pointing out the comment could be hurtful to women struggling to conceive and others describing the family as “ungrateful”. Regardless, everyone agreed it was a misguided remark to make.

SOURCE