Why King Charles won't be doing 'walkabouts' during his Australian tour

King Charles has scrapped the traditional 'walkabout' ahead of his upcoming royal visit to Australia to avoid offending Indigenous Australians.

Charles III, 75, and Queen Camilla, 77, will visit Sydney and Canberra from October 18 to 22 before the couple end their tour in Samoa on the 26th.

The 'walkabout' was first coined by the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip during her majesty's royal visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1970.

It refers to an informal way for members of the royal family to meet with the public.

The phrase in Indigenous culture describes a time period symbolic of change, meditation and grief when a person travels to the bush on foot.

The official itinerary indicates that the 'royal walkabout' will instead be replaced with 'an opportunity to meet the public'.

The King and the Duchess of Cornwall are still expected to interact with hundreds of well-wishers in both Australia and Samoa during their short visit.

The tour will mark the first visit by His Majesty since his ascension to the throne.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13840519/Prince-Charles-Australia-tour-walkabouts.html

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Australia: Labor’s promised hate speech bill will not deal with ‘hate speech’

Labor has scrubbed criminal penalties for seriously vilifying minority groups from its upcoming hate crimes bill, watering down its proposed laws just months after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed to introduce stronger measures to protect people from hate speech.

Sources familiar with Labor’s promised hate speech bill said it had been significantly weakened in the final stages of drafting and was now starkly different from Albanese’s original pledge, which he made earlier this year following months of concern about inflamed antisemitism.

A minority of demonstrators at a rally at the Opera House in October 2023 chanted anti-Semitic slogans.
A minority of demonstrators at a rally at the Opera House in October 2023 chanted anti-Semitic slogans.Credit:Lisa Maree Williams

Sources, who spoke anonymously as they were bound to confidentiality in order to be briefed, said it will not use the words “hate speech” nor introduce a serious anti-vilification law, which was a key aim of the bill. Instead, it will focus on acts and threats of violence.

Albanese promised to strengthen hate speech laws and criminalise “doxxing” in February as community tensions ran high over the war in Gaza and anti-Zionist activists published the names and details of almost 600 Jewish writers, artists and academics.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the anti-doxxing laws, which he will also introduce on Thursday, impose a maximum six-year prison sentence for maliciously using personal data, which will increase to seven years if a person or group is targeted because of their race, religion, sexuality, gender, nationality or disability.

But his office refused to provide any detail about the hate crimes bill before it was tabled in parliament. The softened legislation will disappoint those who had demanded strong action on hate speech, such as LGBTQ advocates and Jewish representatives, but should satisfy stakeholders more concerned about freedom of religion and speech, such as Christian groups.

This masthead revealed in May that Dreyfus was drafting a hate speech bill that would impose criminal penalties for serious instances of vilification based on a person’s race, sexuality, gender, disability or religion.

Walking away from that creates another political dispute for Albanese, who will be forced to clarify how he plans to get tougher on hate speech if the bill does not allay community concerns, particularly around antisemitism.

The hate speech laws were intended as a compromise to faith groups, who were dismayed after Labor ditched its election promise to introduce a civil anti-vilification law through a now-abandoned religious discrimination act. The government also spent the last fortnight tied in knots over its commitment to LGBTQ questions in the census as it tried to avoid a divisive debate.

Jewish groups have been seeking assurance from the government that new laws would address concerns about the antisemitic phrases chanted by protesters near the Sydney Opera House following Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion welcomed the Albanese government’s commitment back in February, saying: “We have called for an end to the impunity and we are grateful that the government has listened”.

LGBTQ groups have also been pushing for stronger protections, particularly since the government walked away from its election promise to remove a controversial part of the sex discrimination act that allows religious schools to discriminate against staff and students.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-s-promised-hate-speech-bill-will-not-deal-with-hate-speech-20240910-p5k9dp.html

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Attempts To Limit Bad Speech May Endanger Good Speech

It’s too soon to untangle the arrest of Pavel Durov, CEO of the encrypted-messaging service Telegram, which he co-founded. The French government has indicted him on charges of complicity in the distribution of child sex abuse images, aiding organized crime and refusing lawful orders to give information to law enforcement. There are still many questions about the extent of Durov’s role other than operating what the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel called the “platform of choice for many activists, crypto scammers, drug dealers, terrorists, extremists, banned influencers, and conspiracy theorists.”

But it’s not too soon to talk about the implications for free speech, because we’ve already been wrestling with the problems posed by services like Telegram for many years — and will do so for many to come.

When I started writing on the internet, more than 20 years ago, my fellow bloggers and I assumed it was a free and open place where anything could happen. “The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it,” we used to tell each other, a little giddy. Well into the social media era, Twitter executives proudly proclaimed that their company belonged to “the free speech wing of the free speech party.”

But as the World Wide Web entered its third decade, the internet’s scale and reach empowered some very bad actors, from trolls to white nationalists to child pornographers and drug cartels. A clamor arose to crack down on all this dangerous chatter — which brings us to Pavel Durov.

The Associated Press reports that French authorities are saying his company has “refused to share information or documents with investigators when required by law.” The possibility that loose moderation and encrypted messaging are empowering heinous crimes is a real challenge for the free-speech wing of the free-speech party: Platforms where speech is unfettered are also platforms that make it easier to say, and do, antisocial things. This has always been a problem with free speech, of course, but the internet has given the bad guys opportunities we could never before have imagined.

And so there has been a concerted push for institutions to censor, to hand over user data, to fiddle with algorithms to tilt conversations in a more prosocial direction. Defending the freedom to say dark things — in private or public — inevitably raises the question “Why would you want to help such people?” Services such as Telegram, where conversations can tip from bad speech to bad deeds, make this particularly awkward to answer.

But there is an answer, which is that this is the wrong question. We should not be asking whether anyone wants to help criminals (no!) but whether it’s worth sacrificing our own liberties to make it easier for the government to stop them. The Bill of Rights answered this with a resounding no, and that’s still the correct answer after more than 200 years.

If you allow people to say anything, you’ll see a lot of hateful filth, but you will also see robust discussions that make our democracy stronger. If you allow bloggers to speculate about anything that crosses their minds, you will find they generate a lot of nonsense — and also provide a useful check on institutions that aren’t doing their jobs properly. If you maintain spaces where people can talk away from the prying eyes of the authorities, you will make it harder for democratic governments to catch criminals and also make it harder for despotic governments to crack down on political activists.

It’s tempting to say that we’ll let only the good governments have those powers, for good purposes. That we aren’t really sacrificing an important freedom, only the kinds of freedom that no one should have. That we’re simply sanding off the wilder edges of the internet, while leaving plenty of spaces for all the right kinds of speech to flourish.

But while it might not be one short step from a Telegram crackdown to a full-blown Chinese-style surveillance state, there is an inevitable trade-off: When such powers are used, they can be abused, as even democratic governments have done when they’ve decided that some emergency — communism, terrorism, the pandemic — required us to give up some of our liberties in the name of hunting the bad people.

Inevitably, we regret those concessions. Coincidentally, shortly after Durov was arrested, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a letter in response to a U.S. House committee inquiry, regretfully admitting that the Biden White House had pressured Meta to censor disinformation during the pandemic, and that Meta had done so in some cases, though Zuckerberg takes full responsibility for those decisions. Undoubtedly, those officials thought they were helping people, but ultimately Facebook, owned by Meta, ended up also throttling reasonable speculation about the origins of the virus, along with an absolutely true story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, right ahead of an election.

Small cost, I’m sure many of my readers will say, especially if they voted for Joe Biden. But then consider how Donald Trump might use such powers — and then consider what even worse governments might do with expansive powers over Telegram’s user base. Which is why we keep deciding anew to tie officials’ hands: not because we’re afraid of what they’ll do to the criminals but because we’re afraid of what might eventually be done to us.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/29/telegram-pavel-durov-free-speech/

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Another blog down

Google have deleted my "Education Watch" blog.  No idea why.  It was all pretty mainstream conservative stuff.

It was most likely Google's AI that deleted it so  I have requested a review of the decision and that might get the blog back up

To read the sort of posts on it see my backups of it e.g. here:

http://jonjayray.com/edaug24.html

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All my main blogs below:

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

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UN agency staff told not to say 'Englishman' or 'man's best friend' in latest crackdown on gendered language

A United Nations agency has been branded 'Orwellian' after it told staff not to use the term 'Englishman' in the latest crackdown on 'gendered' language.

The Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation – which protects trademarks and patents globally – has also vetoed masculine terms including 'forefathers' and 'brother­hood of man'.

Even 'man's best friend' has been blacklisted – with 'a faithful dog' to be used instead. And 'birth attendant' is suggested as an alternative to 'midwife'.

The move comes after the British Red Cross was accused of having been 'hijacked by political extremists' after clamping down on phrases such as 'ladies and gentlemen' and 'maiden name'.

According to the 'Guidelines on inclusive language' published by the UN agency – known as WIPO – using 'masculine-specific' terms risks giving the impression that 'women are not represented in certain groups or do not possess certain skills'.

Among the terms staff should not use are Englishman – with 'English person' or 'English national' given as alternatives.

'Man in the street' should be replaced by 'ordinary citizen' or 'typical person', while the word 'sportsmanlike' is to be avoided in favour of 'fair' or 'sporting'.

Caveman or cavewoman are both frowned upon, with the guide suggesting 'cave dweller' or 'prehistoric people', while 'humanity' is preferred to 'the brotherhood of man'.

A separate list of gender-neutral terms for occupations advises replacing 'lumberjack' with 'wood chopper' or 'logger' and waiter/waitress with 'wait staff' or, 'server'.

Another on the list is 'midwife', with the suggested alternative given as 'birth attendant' – although the guide does concede that midwife 'may still be the preferable term, depending on the context'.

Last night Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: 'This is precisely what George Orwell warned us about.

'Banning certain words and phrases to advance a dogmatic political ideology is a hallmark of totalitarianism.'

Last month the Daily Mail revealed how staff at the British Red Cross were being told that 'people who are not women' can get pregnant and have periods.

Meanwhile NHS trusts have instructed employees to use gender-neutral language, with midwives told to refer to 'mothers or birthing parents', and 'chestmilk' as an alternative to breastmilk.

Signed off by WIPO director general Daren Tang, the guidelines are 'not prescriptive and common sense and clarity of text should always prevail'.

WIPO said the document was 'designed to be a straightforward awareness-raising exercise for our colleagues on how to use

language that resonates with the widest possible audience, which may include avoiding terms that are linked to one specific gender when other neutral, more-inclusive words are available.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13824739/un-agency-staff-englishman-gendered-language.html

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Conservative YouTube Accounts Terminated Over Fear of Russian Influence

YouTube terminated the accounts of a conservative influencer and her media company Thursday evening, one day after the Justice Department indicated the company was tied to a Russian scheme to influence the 2024 election.

The accounts for Tenet Media and Lauren Chen were removed one day after Attorney General Merrick Garland held a press conference announcing an indictment of two Russians in an alleged scheme to influence the 2024 election. A note on Tenet Media’s channel states that it “violated our Community Guidelines” and Chen’s personal account on the Google-owned video site was listed as “not available” Friday morning.

The Justice Department claimed that individuals tied to Russian media outlet RT provided $10 million to promote accounts at a U.S.-based media outlet that had only 16 million views across 2,000 videos. The Justice Department did not name Tenet, but multiple news outlets have confirmed it was the company named in the indictment.

Tenet Media’s talent includes podcasters Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern, according to its website. The personal YouTube pages for Rubin, Johnson, Pool, and Southern were still available Friday.

The DOJ’s assertions in the indictment have been viewed skeptically by some conservatives, who noted the claims that Russia colluded with former President Donald Trump during his successful 2016 campaign for the White House. The Steele Dossier, which was used to further allegations of collusion, was later discredited.

YouTube confirmed its action in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Following an indictment from the US Department of Justice and after careful review, we are terminating the Tenet Media channel and four channels operated by its owner Lauren Chen as part of our ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations,” a spokesperson for YouTube told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Chen and Tenet Media did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/06/youtube-takes-down-conservative-podcast-network-tied-to-doj-russia-indictment/

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In this free speech fight, Musk’s X has marked the right position

When it comes to free expression, Elon Musk tends to talk the talk more ably than he walks the walk. In his latest public tussle on the subject, however, he’s managing to do both. The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is correct when he says a Brazilian jurist’s move to unilaterally prohibit X, which he owns, from operating in the country is an assault on internet speech around the world.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has been on a quest to clean up online disinformation for years, having ordered platforms to remove reams of posts that he has declared threatening to democracy. The effort garnered praise from left of center commentators during the latter stages of right-wing populist Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s term, as the then-incumbent and his supporters threatened not to accept the results if they lost the 2022 election. And, indeed, yanking down lies with the potential to distort the vote or inspire violence may be the responsible thing for platforms such as X to do in certain limited circumstances. But it is beyond irresponsible for the government to make such calls. The story in Brazil has shown why.

Mr. Moraes’s takedown campaign might have been effective in combating right-wing conspiracy theories, but at a substantial cost to free expression — with mandates for removals and even arrest warrants often issued under seal and with scant reasoning to support them. The recent move against X is both more of the same and just plain more: After X ignored the court’s orders to block more than 140 accounts, the justice warned he would arrest its legal representative in Brazil. That prompted Mr. Musk to remove X’s team from the country. That lack of a physical presence, in turn, led Mr. Moraes to instruct that X be blocked for all 220 million Brazilians — who, he said, could face fines of almost $9,000 a day if they tried to circumvent the restriction.

If this sounds authoritarian, it is. Whatever the threat to democracy that the accounts Mr. Moraes wanted gone might have posed, the threat from one government official limiting the speech of 220 million people is greater. Taken together with Mr. Moraes’s choice to freeze the assets of internet-provider Starlink, a separate company of Mr. Musk’s, this move aligns Brazil not with the free world but with the likes of China and Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/04/elon-musk-x-brazil-judge-speech/

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I'm American - this is the common phrase Australians use that's 'highly offensive' to us

An expat living in Australia has revealed the one common phrase that Aussies should never use when speaking to an American: 'oldies'.

Ellie Drabik said that the everyday, 'innocent' phrase used by many Aussies would cause extreme offense in the US.

'My Americans, brace yourself for this, because this would never fly in America,' she said in a video.

'People literally call elderly people "oldies"... they talk about them and say those are the oldies or that's where the oldies go.'

Ellie added that the popular term, which would 'send you to jail for bad manners in America', didn't seem to be offensive among Aussies.

'In America saying you're old or an oldie would send people through the roof, like it would absolutely not fly, it would be completely not okay,' she added.

Ellie admitted that despite how insulting the expression would be in her home country, it was still her favourite local abbreviation.

Aussies reacting to the video defended the popular term and insisted that it was the best way to refer to older Australians and was meant to be a sign of affection.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13779411/Im-American-common-phrase-Australians-use-thats-highly-offensive-us.html

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Author Stephen King stunned to learn Florida's banned 23 of his books

It sounds like the law was over-interpreted

Horror master Stephen King was shocked to learn that 23 of his books have been banned in Florida - as his publisher joins a massive lawsuit against the state.

'What the f**k?' the famous author posted on X in response to learning the news.

Hundreds of books have been removed from schools as a result of the Florida law known as the 'Don't Say Gay' bill.

Some of King's novels that have reportedly been taken off the shelves include Carrie, It, The Gunslinger, The Running Man and The Long Walk.

King's publisher, Simon & Schuster, along with five other major publishers launched a lawsuit challenging the Florida law last week.

The other publishers to sign on are Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, and Sourcebooks.

Others who have joined the suit include bestselling authors Julia Alvarez, Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas, as well as the Authors Guild, two students and two parents.

The list of banned books includes classics such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, according to the publishers.

'As publishers dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and the right to read, the rise in book bans across the country continues to demand our collective action,' the group said in a joint statement.

'Fighting unconstitutional legislation in Florida and across the country is an urgent priority.

'We are unwavering in our support for educators, librarians, students, authors, readers - everyone deserves access to books and stories that show different perspectives and viewpoints.'

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the 'Don't Say Gay' bill in 2022, limiting access to materials containing 'sexual conduct' in classrooms.

Florida's legislature passed an expanded version of the law in May 2023, restricting in-classroom instruction of gender identity and sexual orientation for all public school grad -levels.

Additionally, the law also makes it easier for parents to remove books that they feel are inappropriate from school bookshelves.

Any person can challenge a book for any reason within their county. Once a challenge is levied, the book in question must be pulled from the shelves during the review process, which could take weeks or months.

PEN America tracked 3,135 bans across 11 school districts in Florida from July 1, 2021 to December 23, 2023.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13805523/stephen-king-author-florida-banned-books.html

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Awkward moment footy commentator uses extremely 'politically incorrect' language to describe a white female player

Footy fans are torn over a seemingly casual comment made during an AFLW match, with some calling it the ultimate compliment and others calling for the commentator to be sacked.

The incident occured during the opening round of the AFLW with Essendon taking on Fremantle on Saturday.

The commentary team, including veteran caller Kelli Underwood and former AFLW champion Kirby Bentley, turned their conversation to Fremantle veteran Ashleigh Brazill early in the third quarter.

That was when Bentley stunned viewers by saying she thought the Fremantle star was 'black' the first time they met as teenagers - because she was so athletic.

Bentley has known Brazill for almost two decades and played a key role in luring her over to Aussie Rules from netball.

Bentley is a proud Indigenous woman who founded charity carnival the Kirby Bentley Cup aimed at improving inclusion and opportunity for Aboriginal girls.

Brazill claimed gold medals at the Netball World Cup and Commonwealth Games and has juggled both sports since she was drafted into the AFLW in 2017.

Underwood began the exchange by talking up the athleticism of Brazill.

'Thirty four years of age, Ash Brazill, this is her 33rd career AFLW game and of course she was All Australian back in 2019 - and she's still got that speed,' she said.

That was when Bentley revealed that she had deep ties with Brazill.

'I've known Braz since she was 16, she was a rookie when I was playing national netball with her,' she said.

'It's insane, it's great to see her out here still with the amount of intensity that we put our bodies under.'

Underwood then asked: 'As a 16-year-old, did you pick it? Or has she been a sort of late bloomer and developer to both sports?

'She was a freak athlete,' Bentley confirmed.

'Her vertical leap was second to none, I thought she was black.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/afl/article-13800625/Shocking-moment-footy-commentator-uses-extremely-politically-incorrect-language-white-female-player.html

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Google censorship

In what I say below, I may not be criticizing any live person at Google. What I talk about may be the work of their AI alone.

There is however some hope. After a couple of requests from me for a review of the ban on my "Australian Politics" blog, the ban has been lifted. So I now am postng to it again at its old blogspot site:

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com

Hooray!


Leftist dominance of political thought is nothing new. I wrote a book about it in 1974:

http://jonjayray.com/chapters.html

But recent years have seen a great upsurge in active attempts to suppress the publication of conservative thinking. Google is part of that tendency. They are no longer just a search engine. They now actively censor thought that they disapprove of, calling it "misinformation".

And they are very sensitive to negative comments about C*v*d v*cc*n*s. In their view, the v*cc*n*s save lives so any commentary that discourages uptake of them costs lives. I am not allowed to differ in any way from that opinion in what I write

So they delete such negative commentary from my blogs where it appears and have also wiped out one of my blogs completely: "The Psychologist". It published occasional negative commentary and now no longer exists on Blogspot.

I was not too perturbed by the disappearance of "The Psychologist". It was simply a collection of posts that had appeared elsehere in my blogs so no thought or information was lost by its demolition.

For anyone curious about what appeared there, all its recent content can accessed from the Wayback Machine. Use the search term:

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com

The clue to using The Wayback Machine is that you have to delete the asterisk in the search results

For illustrative purposes, I have grabbed a random couple of months of it from the Wayback Machine and posted it here:

http://jonjayray.com/awe.html

It is a large file so may take a minute to load

I have also started a new blog to replace it called "Select Thought". It is beyond the control of Google so all they can do about it is to refuse all mention of it in search results. It does not mention anything to do with C*v*d, however so they may give it a pass. The link to it is:

http://jonjayray.com/select.html

I have not however stopped putting up all skeptical thought about the v*cc*n*s. I have simply confined such commentary to a new blog especially devoted to that purpose. It is here:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html

There are some wild conspiracy theories about C*v*d, particularly on Substack, but I do not reference those. I confine my attention to statistically-based studies

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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‘Far-Right’ as an all-purpose term of abuse

The political world is full of baseless slurs uttered by historically and politically illiterate shock-jocks.

The current favourite is ‘far-right’.

Pretty much any crime against Woke will see you saddled with this slur. From querying Labor’s ‘Big Australia’ dream, to partaking in capitalism, to defending free speech… You’re ‘far-right’. You’re dangerous.

Dangerous to left-wing politics, maybe.

When it comes to the definition of ‘far-right’, the pillars of Western Civilisation serve as scaffolding while common sense and merit pad-out the walls.

There are so many Australians cosying up to ‘far-right’ ideas and political parties, that there’s a genuine concern this radical point of view will become the majority. Given how embarrassing it would be to the UniParty and its Green and Teal offshoots to have the Australian people leaning back into old-school values like prosperity and democracy, something has to be done.

Democracy isn’t working, so it has been decided to re-classify political dissent as ‘terrorism’.

What did the head of ASIO, Mike Burgess, have to say about extreme-right propaganda in 2021?

‘Extreme right-wing propaganda used Covid to portray governments as oppressors, and globalisation, multiculturalism, and democracy as flawed and failing.’

That seems a bit harsh. Is it really ‘far-right’ to oppose abusive governments and question their authoritarian methods? Is it ‘far-right’ to pick fault with globalism and multiculturalism? Well then… It must definitely be ‘far-right’ to see flaws in our democracy (unless you want to dismantle democracy entirely – then you’re a social justice warrior).

Mike Burgess continued:

‘So-called right-wing extremism has been in ASIO’s sights for many years … today’s ideological extremist is more likely to be motivated by a social or economic grievance than national socialism. More often than not, they are young, well-educated, articulate, and middle class – and not easily identified … ideological extremists are now more reactive to world events, such as Covid, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the recent American Presidential election.’

ASIO cannot define what they mean by ‘far-right’ because there is no ‘far-right’ movement, only a collection of citizens with different complaints about the government who feel as if they are not being listened to and so have aligned themselves with freedom-oriented political parties.

It’s not extremism or terror – unless you’re a member of the UniParty and you’re terrified about the next election.

Most of us would rather ASIO pay more attention to Islamic terror threats instead of chasing political shadows, especially in light of what’s been happening in Europe over the weekend.

Journalists are even more devoted to their fears of the ‘far-right’ – perhaps because they are tired of the masses using their free speech to criticise them on social media…

What – exactly – constitutes ‘extreme’ right-wing beliefs to those who toss the slur around?

One article said this:

‘These include an ideological commitment to: violent social revolution, a hatred of Islam and other forms of cultural diversity, homophobia, a deep suspicion of the democratic state, and a contorted exaltation of the principle ‘survival of the fittest’. There is also a deep hatred of nature and green-progressive politics.’

I beg your pardon?

Have you ever heard of your ‘far-right’ conservative friends plotting a violent social revolution? No. Neither have I. The people waving Australian flags, commemorating our sacred days, and demanding the government honour its heritage are hardly treading water in front of a revolution.

Parties such as One Nation want a restoration and a return to sanity.

The only people tossing statues aside and demanding ‘the colonies fall’ are on the left. They are the ones with red spray paint on their hands.

As for harbouring a hatred of green-progressive politics, yes, those who care about the environment tend to hate the idea of wind turbines clogging up our rainforests and corrupting our beach views. It takes a special kind of insanity to bulldoze nature at the behest of billion-dollar foreign companies and then claim you are the one who cares about green things.

We will not be gaslit by the left. They are not the caretakers of nature.

Also upsetting those on the left is the so-called far-right’s ‘nurturing of womanhood’. How the protection of womanhood has been repainted as a type of far-right evil is unclear. Should we not nurture womanhood? Or is womanhood still seen as a threat to the cold, impersonal order of a communist society…

The article further accuses parties, such as One Nation, of camouflaging their ‘far-right’ ideas under conventional or centrist policies. Sorry to disappoint, but One Nation says exactly what it means. If our polices or ideas are perceived to be ‘conventional’ or sensible – that is because they are.

And here is where the article’s argument against the ‘far-right’ becomes interesting, if not disturbing.

It takes particular offence at the protection of individual freedom and liberty.

‘Far-right politics exalt the individual as a “sovereign citizen” who should be permitted to determine his or her own life choices without interference by governments and their oppressive majorities,’ the authors complain.

Well, yes. Citizens are sovereign. They should be permitted to determine their own lives. The government should keep out of their way as much as possible.

‘Freedom is therefore conceived in terms of individual prosperity and power beyond any sense of social responsibility or justice.’

Yes, individual freedom to live, work, and succeed should be paramount otherwise citizens are merely slaves to the will of the State. One Nation believes that your life is your own, not the plaything of ideologues and activists.

‘Far-right ideology, specifically, creates a meaningful truth narrative which is deftly welded onto real or imagined grievances and social anxieties … the far-right narrative, therefore, is able to blame the government, the rule of law, outsiders, the state, and expert systems like medical science.’

Setting aside the political left being home to the largest and most costly grievance industry ever created, the idea that you cannot blame the government for policy mistakes is simply extraordinary.

Governments are both the curators and caretakers of society. Their errors, of which they have made many in recent history, filter down into catastrophes if left unchecked.

Mass migration from the third world, is absolutely a government policy error that has created very real and very difficult problems for citizens of which they very much should place blame directly on Albanese and the Labor Party.

I could go on, but the words of these authors condemn them sufficiently.

If ‘far-right’ means to put Australia first, to love Australia, to honour her history, to cherish her culture, and to stand up for the rights and liberties of every citizen – then alright. We are all ‘far-right’.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/far-right-or-just-right-about-everything/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Zuckerberg admits Biden-Harris administration 'pressured' Facebook to censor Americans

Facebook censored Covid-19 and election-related content under “repeated pressure” from the White House and FBI, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In an explosive admission that has far-reaching implications for US presidential elections, both in 2020 and 2024, Mr Zuckerberg apologised for his actions to stifle free speech and expression around the world – including political and medical content, as well as humour and satire.

“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee.

“I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Mr Zuckerberg’s turnaround comes as Twitter/X’s “free speech absolutist” owner Elon Musk called for the release of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, arrested in France over unmoderated content on the privacy-focused app.

“Instagram has a massive child exploitation problem, but no arrest for Zuck, as he censors free speech and gives governments backdoor access to user data,” Mr Musk said.

Mr Zuckerberg pointed to senior officials from the Biden-Harris administration and the White House for hounding his team for months in 2021 to take down Covid-related posts.

A year earlier, during the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Mr Zuckerberg said the FBI claimed there would be a Russian disinformation operation about Hunter Biden and Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In both instances, he said it was Facebook’s decision to remove content about Covid and a news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, published in The New York Post.

“It has since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Mr Zuckerberg.

Former president Trump claimed Mr Zuckerberg’s admission showed that the 2020 election “was rigged”.

“This is what everyone’s been waiting for,” Mr Trump said on Truth Social.

“Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!),” he added, confusing the fact he was still in the White House during the 2020 election.

Despite Mr Trump mixing up whether it was his White House as opposed to the FBI that pressured Facebook, Mr Zuckerberg said the social media platform would not be playing a similar role in the 2024 election against Kamala Harris.

“I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he said.

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating Facebook and the role its content moderation played in suppressing information during the 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Zuckerberg, who also donated almost $A500 million to finance local elections in 2020, said he does not plan to make similar contributions this year. He was heavily criticised over what became known as “Zuckerbucks”.

“They were designed to be nonpartisan — spread across urban, rural, and suburban communities,” he said of his motives. “Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.”

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role.

Republicans’ House Judiciary Committee account on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, labelling it a “big win for free speech.”

The White House defended its actions during the pandemic, which killed more than a million people in the United States amid bitter political battles over vaccines and attempts to limit the spread of the virus.

“When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” a White House spokesman said Tuesday.

“We believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/facebook-admits-mass-covid19-and-political-censorship/news-story/b501db6a7f4343e098e1bf7e239dea80

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Free Speech Victory for New York Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers

A federal district court ruled Thursday that pro-life pregnancy centers in New York may inform women “that the abortion pill reversal (‘APR’) protocol is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use, with her doctor, to reverse the effects of a first chemical abortion pill and thereby, help to save the life of her unborn child.”

District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr., a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary injunction because the pregnancy centers are “likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment Free Speech claim, and they are suffering irreparable harm each day that their Constitutional freedoms are infringed.”

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, had initiated a civil enforcement action against 11 faith-based, pro-life pregnancy centers that were part of Heartbeat International to censor their speech, alleging that informing women about the APR protocol was “misleading advertising.”

In response to James, Alliance Defending Freedom challenged the constitutionality of her enforcement action in federal court, on behalf of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a pregnancy center network with 51 locations in the state, and two of its members, Gianna’s House and Options Care Center.

“Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers about using safe and effective progesterone for abortion pill reversal,” said Caleb Dalton, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel. “But the attorney general tried to deny women the opportunity to even hear about this lifesaving option.”

Elected abortion activists have sought to restrict pro-life pregnancy centers from offering the APR protocol, which literally reverses the work of a chemical abortion. In April 2023, the Colorado Legislature banned APR on similar grounds that it was ineffective. At first, the state agreed not to enforce that law, but a federal judge eventually enjoined the law in October on religious exercise grounds.

However, studies show that the APR protocol has saved the lives of over 5,000 unborn babies and has a success rate of up to 64%-68%.

“Many women regret their abortions, and some seek to stop the effects of abortion drugs before taking the second drug in the abortion drug process. Taking supplemental progesterone may give them a chance to save their baby’s life,” Dalton added. “Women should have the option to reconsider an abortion, and the pro-life pregnancy centers we represent in this case truthfully inform them about that choice.”

This is not the first time National Institute of Family and Life Advocates has gone to court over attempts by pro-abortion politicians to police its speech. Eight years ago, the pro-life network of pregnancy centers challenged a California law that would have required it to refer women for abortion, something that went against its deeply held religious beliefs. NIFLA’s opponents in the case were California Attorney General Kamala Harris and later California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, both Democrats.

In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in NIFLA v. Becerra that the California law did unconstitutionally compel the speech of the pro-life pregnancy centers.

Sinatra quoted NIFLA v. Becerra in his opinion. “Government, even with the purest of motives, may not substitute its judgment as to how best to speak for that of speakers and listeners; free and robust debate cannot thrive if directed by the government,” the judge wrote, citing another case. “And this is particularly true ‘in the fields of medicine and public health, where information can save lives.’ Nat’l Inst. Of Fam. & Life Advocs. V. Becerra.”

“Indeed, the ‘very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion,’” wrote Sinatra. “The First Amendment protects Plaintiffs’ right to speak freely about APR protocol and, more specifically, to say that it is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use in consultation with her doctor.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/08/26/free-speech-victory-for-new-york-pro-life-pregnancy-centers/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Australia: Prominent conservative's explosive call to FIRE teachers for 'brainwashing' students by getting them to recite Welcome to Country speech

These rituals are "softening up" --  designed to entrench the idea that Aborigines have property rights beyond what other Australians have.  They are a prelude to "reparations"  -- Transferring to blacks money that  they have not earned

Pauline Hanson has demanded 'racist teachers' are sacked and banned for life for 'brainwashing' students with 'divisive' Acknowledgement of Country rituals.

The call comes as Daily Mail Australia can reveal every state school in the country is being officially urged to include the controversial ceremonies.

Primary school parents have reported they were stunned to see their children being forced to touch the ground and chant 'always was, always will be Aboriginal land' at the start of each school assembly.

In NSW, children as young as three are encouraged to take part in the ritual in taxpayer-funded pre-schools by declaring: 'Today we play and learn on [the local Indigenous people's] Country and pay our respects to our Elders past and present.'  

Senator Hanson told Daily Mail Australia she was 'disgusted' by the practice and called for heads to roll.

'These racist activists - teachers and lecturers - know what they're doing,' she said.

'The activists are now coming for our kids so they can try again with the new generation they've brainwashed.

Pauline Hanson has called for activist educators to be sacked and banned from teaching for life, accusing them of trying to 'brainwash' the next generation of Australians

'They're getting inside kids' heads as early as possible to program them. It has to stop.

'Any teacher who tries to indoctrinate children should be sacked and never allowed to teach in Australia again.

'Schools are for education, not indoctrination. Children should be taught how to think – critical thinking – not what to think.'

Each state education department offers strict guidelines regarding the inclusion of Welcome to Country and Acknowledgement of Country rituals in the nation's taxpayer-funded schools.

Welcome to Country ceremonies - which can only be performed by appropriate Indigenous Elders - were considered essential at all significant primary and high school events.

Meanwhile, an Acknowledgements of Country - which 'can be conducted by anyone (children or adults) who wishes to pay their respect' - were encouraged as part of the daily curriculum.

Queensland has the strictest rules in place, with the state's education department insisting 'an Acknowledgement of Country is to be provided at all [Department of Education] events'.

This includes graduation and award ceremonies, festivals and event launches, major conferences, significant community forums, and school and venue openings.

The guidelines say the proclamation can also be included at school assemblies, sports days, parent and citizens' committee meetings and fetes.

A Welcome to Country is also mandatory at all major school events in South Australia, while 'an Acknowledgement of Country is optional at other events, meetings and forums, including school assemblies'.

In Victoria, the rituals extend into the classroom, with the state's education department advising 'schools are encouraged to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land at...assemblies, at the start of class, school council meetings and parent information sessions'.    

Western Australia's education department guidelines explained it 'supported' the inclusion of 'an Acknowledgement of Country at school assemblies, staff meetings and other internal events'.

Parents have told Daily Mail Australia that they were alarmed to find the ritual was now even being included in young children's birthday parties outside of school.

'I took my daughter to a friend's ninth birthday in Sydney's inner-west and all the kids had to participate in an Acknowledgement of Country,' one parent said.

'It was really strange - none of the children at the party were Indigenous - so it just seemed to be virtue signalling by the parents. It was surreal.'

Senator Hanson said she had told her grandson he did not have to participate in any of the rituals at this primary school.

'When my grandson told me he was being forced to touch the ground while reciting the divisive acknowledgment of country, I told him, "You don't have to do it; this is your land as well," and now he doesn't,' she said.

'I encourage all Australian families to do the same. They're your kids - not child soldiers press-ganged as cannon fodder in racist culture war.

'We must not allow future generations to be indoctrinated with racist divisions. Every Australian citizen born here or overseas has as much right to this land as anyone else.

'Most Australians have had enough of being told their country is not theirs.'  

The One Nation leader has also called for a wider ban of the practice in all public, taxpayer-funded settings.

'They’re recited at the beginning of every parliamentary sitting day, every council meeting, and every zoom meeting held by public servants,' she said.

'We hear them at the conclusion of every domestic flight – you can hear the groans in the cabin every time.

'That’s why One Nation last year moved to call for a ban on Welcomes to Country, calling for the promise of leading Voice to Parliament campaigner Marcia Langton to be fulfilled.

'It’s become meaningless and offensive. It’s an activist device, and a vehicle for the same racial division Australians overwhelmingly rejected at last year’s referendum.

'Australia belongs to all Australians, equally. That’s been my position since I first entered Parliament in 1996: equal rights for all, and special rights for none.'

Professor Langton is one of the key architects of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament proposal.

The respected writer last year predicted many Indigenous Australians would no longer participate in Welcome to Country ceremonies if the Voice to Parliament referendum was unsuccessful.

This past week, Prof Langton told Daily Mail Australia she was 'not available' to comment on whether there had been any reluctance or refusal to officiate the ceremonies as suggested.

But Indigenous affairs academic Anthony Dillon said the Welcome to Country and Acknowlegment of Country ceremonies had become so overused they had both become largely meaningless.

'I'm not a big fan of the Welcome to Country or the Acknowledgement of Country,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'They should be saved for special occasions. In the right circumstances, when done with sincerity, they can be powerful and beautiful.

'But unfortunately, they're overused and have become almost mandatory for any and every occasion.

'I've no problem with them being included in schools just so long as they don't get hijacked for political purposes and stretched into that whole "white man is bad, he must apologise" thing.

'If people want to do them at children's birthday parties, that's fine - I'd probably sit there and cringe a bit and, if they asked me, I'd say I wasn't into it - but that's up to the parents and its fairly harmless.     

'At the same time, I'm also not a fan of people who want to make this a big political issue. It's not.

'Instead, what we should be focusing on is getting kids in schools and communities cleaned up.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13763899/welcome-country-pauline-hanson-ban.html

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Was it necessary to send this Facebook poster to prison?

For what was essentially careless speech

Of the hundreds of people arrested in the wake of the riots, one in particular haunts my mind. It’s Julie Sweeney from Church Lawton in Cheshire. She’s a 53-year-old carer for her husband. And this week she was sentenced to 15 months in jail for writing an odious Facebook post while the riots were in full flow. Someone has to ask, and it might as well be me: who benefits from the imprisonment of this lady?

Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others

Make no mistake: what she wrote was wicked. In response to a Facebook post featuring a photo of people helping to repair the mosque in Southport after it was damaged by riotous bigots, Sweeney said: ‘It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosque. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it.’ What a vile sentiment. That she thought it is bad enough; that she wrote it down and pressed publish is insane.

She committed a criminal offence. Some of us would like to liberalise the laws around ‘harmful communications’, to ensure that speech that is merely offensive, unwise or alarming is not policed too severely by the state. But the fact is that in the UK in 2024 it is against the law to make a statement as reckless and inciting as ‘blow the mosque up’. It was inevitable that the cops would come knocking for Ms Sweeney.

But a long custodial sentence? Apologies for sounding like a bleeding-heart liberal, but is this necessary? Sweeney has been a carer for her husband since 2015. She has never troubled the law before. She has led a ‘quiet, sheltered life’. She accepts her post was ‘stupid’ and in fact she deleted it not long after posting it. She pleaded guilty to the charge of sending a threatening communication.

Could her sentence not have been suspended? Could she not have been sent home to her husband and her ‘quiet, sheltered’ life, with certain conditions imposed by the court? For instance, she could have been instructed to stay off social media. But 15 months in a cell? For someone who, by all accounts, had a moment of madness online during an explosion of street disorder? ‘Thank you, your honour’, she said, as the judge condemned her to jail. This feels more like a tragedy than justice.

Many will be asking why certain forms of inciting speech seem to be punished more severely and more swiftly than others. We’ve all seen gender crusaders say things like ‘Kill all Terfs’. ‘Decapitate Terfs’, said a banner at a pro-trans rally in Glasgow last year. A year on and Police Scotland insist the case is ‘still open’. Where was the uproar? It’s wrong to say violent-minded things about Muslims but okay to say them about women who believe in women’s rights? Two men have been charged with allegedly chanting about the massacre of Jews on the streets of London in 2021, and yet their trial has been delayed for years. No ‘swift justice’ there.

The post-riots climate is turning ugly. Yes, many of the rioters deserve stiff sentences, especially the weapon-wielding bigots who descended on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. But when I read about a 53-year-old carer being banged up for a gross post online, and a 13-year-old girl being convicted of violent disorder, and people getting jailtime for ‘dancing and gesticulating’ at a line of police officers, I can’t help but wonder if this is morphing into a judicial shaming of the lower orders.

Even more striking than the sentences themselves is the complete absence of concern from the activist class. Where are the civil-rights campaigners and left-wing voices who can usually be relied upon to ask ‘Is this a bit much?’ when tough sentences are handed down to certain communities? They asked that question after the 2011 riots. But now they’re schtum. Perhaps the ‘riff raff’ of Britain’s left-behind towns don’t tickle their sympathy bone as much as other sections of society do.

The riots were dreadful. No decent person denies that. Justice must be served. But the dearth of compassion in the aftermath of the riots is starting to feel a little unsettling, too. Here’s my plea for compassion: let Julie Sweeney go home. Wrecking a woman’s life and leaving her husband without care is too high a price to exact for a moment of bigoted lunacy online.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/was-it-necessary-to-send-this-facebook-poster-to-prison/

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Facebook removes pro-nuclear energy content

Dozens of Facebook users promoting pro-nuclear lobby group Nuclear for Australia’s content have had posts removed for being “misleading”, triggering claims some people are trying to “suppress vital information that could change the future of our country”.

Months out from the federal election – in which nuclear will be a key issue – and after anti-nuclear groups had their content blocked or accounts temporarily deleted across social media platforms, Nuclear for Australia has received 44 complaints from supporters who have had posts taken down.

The users had shared a ­Nuclear for Australia petition to legalise nuclear energy and a video interview between the organisation’s founder, Will Shackel, and businessman Dick Smith supporting the energy source in June and July.

But a Meta spokeswoman played down the issue, denying it had censored the two posts The Australian was able to share with it.

“Based on the information available, we believe the content was removed due to a technical error by our automated systems. The error was identified and fixed in late July and all impacted posts were reinstated,” the spokeswoman said.

Facebook users were told their posts were removed because “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way” and “your post goes against our community standards on spam”.

“We want you to share freely with others. We only remove things or restrict people to keep the community respectful and safe,” Meta says in an automated response.

Mr Shackel will email supporters on Wednesday asking for contributions to “help us bypass the roadblocks and bring the truth to light”.

“The truth about nuclear energy could transform Australia’s future but has been blocked from reaching the people who need to hear it most,” he says in a copy of the email.

“This isn’t just a minor inconvenience – it’s a clear indication of the political will of some to suppress vital information that could change the future of our country.”

Mr Smith, whose face and voice have been used in fraudulent ads online, said it was impossible for the government to legislate against removal of material but they needed to step in and treat Meta and other tech giants as publishers, ensuring they were liable for what they put on their platforms.

“You end up with this situation where they let through fraudulent ads run by criminal gangs but at the same time they delete genuine posts,” Mr Smith said.

Renew Economy, which posts clean energy news and analysis, had the same automated response from Meta as Nuclear for Australia did when a post sharing analysis by University of Queensland economist John Quiggin was removed on July 22.

The analysis was headlined “Czech nuclear deal shows CSIRO GenCost is too optimistic, and new nukes are hopelessly uneconomic” and found building two to four megawatt nuclear plants in Australia would “probably cost $50bn-$100bn, and not be complete until well into the 2040s”.

The Climate Council had a TikTok video hitting out at the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy taken down on July 21 for violating community guidelines of “integrity and authenticity”.

The video reappeared a few days later after a staff member appealed, saying the video was ­science-based and had been reviewed by researchers at the organisation prior to it going live.

The Climate Council says it understands TikTok pulls videos only after users lodge complaints and is investigating how many complaints it takes to get a post removed.

The Australian Conservation Foundation had its account on X suspended on July 22 for violating the social media platform’s rules “against evading suspension” after a user reported them.

The organisation appealed the decision and after the ACF made contact with an Australian-based employee at X, the account was switched back on that night.

ACF’s X profile was suspended for a second time on August 4 with no warning and was down for nearly two days, with the social media platform saying its account had been flagged as spam by mistake.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said at the time he didn’t always agree with the ACF but the suspension was “another outrageous example of social media trying to shut down voices for climate action”.

Mr Shackel posted on X: “Breaking: Australian Conservation Foundation has had its X account suspended. Perhaps the disinformation caught up with them …”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety was examining the influence and impacts of social media on Australian society, including how digital platforms influenced what Australians saw and heard online.

“Digital platforms have a range of community standards, terms of service and policies to support the integrity of the information and accounts on their platforms,” she said.

“Debate on matters of public interest is a hallmark of our democracy.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said social media platforms should not censor legitimate political debate, noting freedom of expression was fundamental to society.

“The last thing we need are digital giants telling us what we can and cannot say but the Albanese government sees things differently,” he said. “If its deeply flawed misinformation bill had become law, political censorship by big tech would have become rampant.”

Mr Bowen was approached for comment but his office referred The Australian to his previous remarks attacking the removal of Renew Economy’s Facebook post and the ACF’s X account.

Opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said: “Labor and others should not rob Australians of their right to a mature conversation about the role zero-emissions nuclear energy could play in Australia as part of a balanced energy mix.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/facebook-removes-pronuclear-energy-content/news-story/03f0994c82eb006062be542a7898276f

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Colourblind test: the word that must be uncancelled

Last year, Australians rejected a referendum to establish an Indigenous voice by a margin of 20 percentage points. The referendum came four months after a similar decision in the United States: the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

Without overstating the similarity between Australia and the United States, both the referendum and the Supreme Court decision brought to light an ideological fault line that has existed in both countries for at least a half century: colourblindness or race-consciousness?

As I discuss in my book, The End of Race Politics, not seeing race is the surest way, these days, to signal that you are on the wrong side of this divide. Indeed, the term “colourblind” has become anathema in many circles, and if you live in elite institutions – universities, corporations, the mainstream media – the quickest way to demonstrate you just don’t get it is to say, “I don’t see colour” or “I was taught to treat everyone the same”.

Once considered a progressive attitude, colourblindness is now seen as backwards – a cheap surrender in the face of racism, at best; or a cover for deeply held racist beliefs, at worst.

But colourblindness is neither racist nor backwards. Properly understood, it is the belief that we should strive to treat people without regard to race in our personal lives and in our public policy.

Though it has roots in the Enlightenment, the colourblind principle was really developed during the fight against slavery and refined during the fight against segregation. It was not until after the civil rights movement achieved its greatest victories that colourblindness was abandoned by progressives, embraced by conservatives, and memory-holed by activist-scholars.

These activist-scholars have written a false history of colourblindness meant to delegitimise it. According to this story, colourblindness was not the motivating principle behind the anti-racist activism of the 19th and 20th centuries.

It was, instead, an idea concocted after the civil rights movement by reactionaries who needed a way to oppose progressive policies without sounding racist. Kimberlé Crenshaw, for instance, has criticised the “colourblind view of civil rights” that she alleges “developed in the neo-conservative ‘think tanks’ during the ’70s”.

Although this public relations campaign has been remarkably successful, it bears no relation to the truth. The earliest mentions of colourblindness come from Wendell Phillips, the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the man nicknamed “abolition’s golden trumpet”. In 1865, Phillips called for the creation of “a government colourblind”, by which he meant the total elimination of all laws that mentioned race.

In the decades that followed, the idea of colourblindness propelled the fight against Jim Crow. Exhibit A: the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson, in which the court – outrageously – ruled 7-1 that “separate-but-equal” was constitutional. The lone dissent in Plessy, the lone flicker of hope, which was written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, features the immortal sentence: “Our constitution is colourblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.”

Decades later, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Thurgood Marshall was battling segregation in the courts, an aide recalled that he considered the Plessy dissent his “bible” and would read aloud from it when he needed inspiration. “Our constitution is colourblind”, his favourite sentence, became the “basic creed” of the NAACP. Among the main goals of the civil rights movement was the elimination of laws and policies that used the category of race in any way.

In fact, that was the first demand made by the original March on Washington movement of the 1940s (which successfully pressured Franklin Roosevelt to integrate the defence industry). It was also the first argument made by the NAACP in its Brown v Board appellate brief.

To paint colourblindness as a reactionary or racist idea – rather than a key goal of the civil rights movement – requires ignoring the historical record.

Yet this is precisely what today’s most celebrated public intellectuals have done.

Ibram X. Kendi, MacArthur Genius and best-selling author of How to be an Anti-Racist, argues that “the most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a white ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one”. In Australia, opponents of the voice referendum were often labelled racist, even as they articulated a belief of equal treatment under the law.

Critics of colourblindness argue it lacks teeth in the fight against racism. If we are blind to race, they say, how can we see racism?

Robin DiAngelo, in her hugely successful 2018 book, White Fragility, sums up the colourblind strategy like this: “Pretend that we don’t see race, and racism will end.” But this argument is no more than a cheap language trick. It’s true we all see race. We can’t help it. What’s more, race can influence how we’re treated and how we treat others. In that sense, no one is truly colourblind.

But to interpret “colourblind” so literally is to misunderstand it – perhaps intentionally.

“Colourblind” is an expression like “warm-hearted”: it uses a physical metaphor to encapsulate an abstract idea. To describe a person as warm-hearted is not to say something about the temperature of that person’s heart, but about the kindness of his or her spirit. Similarly, to advocate for colourblindness is not to pretend you don’t notice colour. It is to endorse a principle: we should strive to treat people without regard to race, in our public policy and our private lives.

In the American context, that meant rejecting policies such as race-based affirmative action in college admissions. In Australia, that meant, among other things, voting no on the voice referendum.

Colourblindness is the best principle with which to govern a multiracial democracy. It is the best way to lower the temperature of racial conflict in the long run. It is the best way to fight the kind of racism that really matters. And it is the best way to orient your own attitude toward this nefarious concept we call race. We abandon colourblindness at our own peril.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/end-race-politics-lets-get-serious-about-embracing-colourblindness/news-story/d32a8ae6cc2985f57e5c7e076d6cd9c1

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Doctor under 'emergency' five year suspension finally goes to trial over social media posts

Melbourne doctor Jereth Kok was suspended under emergency provisions by the medical regulators in 2019 after two anonymous complaints triggered an investigation into his social media posts.

Neither complainant was a patient, and Dr Kok, 43, has never had a complaint made against him by a patient in his 15 year medical career, including ten years as a general practitioner (GP, equivalent of American PCP).

The posts reflected Dr Kok’s conservative Christian views on abortion, gender medicine and sexuality, raising questions over whether Australian medical practitioners are free to publicly express their religious views.

Five years later, Dr Kok finally stood trial in a five day hearing at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), held last month, with another hearing expected to be held later this year before the matter can be settled.

However, even if Dr Kok’s suspension is lifted, the five year process has already effectively ended his career.

”I think that the hurdles would just be insurmountable” he told me, listing the requirements to renew memberships, update his training, find a practice who will take him now that he has a black mark against his name, and the inevitable reeducation and practice conditions required by the regulator. “It’s been a defacto deregistration, hasn’t it?”

The process is the punishment

A spokesperson from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) said that, “Suspension is an interim action that can be taken by a national health profession board (National Board) or a tribunal to protect the public.”

AHPRA is the umbrella bureaucracy over the National Boards (medical, physiotherapy, nursing, dental and so on), which together regulate all registered health practitioners in Australia.

AHPRA did not provide an estimate of average suspension time, but said that “the length of the suspension will vary dependent on the individual circumstances of the matter.”

However, the regulators have come under criticism in recent years for slow walking this “interim” process, resulting in some doctors being sidelined without income for years without any avenue to defend themselves against the accusations levelled at them.

Shockingly, a study into distress caused by AHPRA’s complaints process found that 16 health practitioners took their own lives while subject to investigation between January 2018 to December 2021, with another four self-harming or attempting suicide.

Subjects complained of the stress caused by the excessively prolonged process, and the unfairness of ‘double standards’, where the time allowed for them to provide information was short, contrasted with long gaps in correspondence from AHPRA.

“It's a joke,” said Dr Kok. “I just don't see why it had to take this long. If you're going to use the emergency power, you can't then go and take five years to finish the process off. You've made it so difficult to ever come back to it that most people won't.”

Dr Kok described the experience as a "road test" for his faith. “I've had to rely on God through three years of unemployment, through the grief of suddenly losing contact with all my patients, and through being slandered,” said the married father of two.

As the sole income earner in his family, Dr Kok had to retrain and is now working in the software industry.

Dr Kok also worried about the impact on his patients, explaining that the “abrupt” nature of his suspension meant there was no opportunity for him to do a proper hand over for vulnerable patients with complex medical problems.

He recalled an elderly patient who he regularly visited in a nursing home telling him of her fear that he would leave her. Dr Kok said he felt “dreadful” when her fear was realised without him being allowed to contact her to explain what had happened or to say goodbye.

Dr Kok first found out he’d fallen afoul of AHPRA when he received a letter from the regulator the week before Christmas in 2018. The letter informed Dr Kok that he had been under investigation for nine months after an anonymous complaint was lodged against him in 2017 for comments he made online about the same sex marriage plebiscite.

Another anonymous complaint was made in 2019, this one relating to an article Dr Kok wrote, titled ‘A medical perspective on transgender,’ for Christian news site Eternity News, and other comments he’d made online. Following the second complaint, the Medical Board took immediate action to suspend Dr Kok’s medical registration.

“They are not alleging that I've done any harm in the clinic,” said Dr Kok, clarifying that the complaints and subsequent investigation focused solely on his online posts.

AHPRA launched a far reaching search into Dr Kok’s social media posts and online comments, commissioning forensic IT investigators Ferrier Hodgson to compile a dossier, at an estimated cost of $4,800-$6,000. Ferrier Hodgson also suggested subpoenaing Facebook for complete access to all posts made by Dr Kok from 2014 onwards.

In February 2020, Dr Kok unsuccessfully appealed his emergency suspension. He offered to sign undertaking to remove the offending posts and not to make any further online posts about contentious topics while the investigation was underway.

However, the Medical Board argued that this would not suffice because the “fundamental issue” was Dr Kok’s “character,” “values” and “views,” and what Dr Kok might have “already said to members of the community who might attend on him in his general practice, or the medical profession more generally.”

The Board’s barrister argued that Dr Kok’s suspension was therefore necessary for “public confidence,” but assured that that the investigation would be “concluded very quickly.”

Twenty two months later, in December 2021, Dr Kok was finally told that his case was being referred to the tribunal (similar to a court but less formal). By this time, AHPRA had added posts Dr Kok had made about Covid vaccines and restrictions to add to its brief.

Now, three years on from his referral to the tribunal, and five years since his initial suspension, Dr Kok has finally had the opportunity to defend himself against the regulators’ accusations.

On trial for ‘inflammatory’ social media posts

During his VCAT hearing last month, Dr Kok was accused of professional misconduct related to 85 social media posts and online comments he wrote between 2010 and 2021, including memes, and a sarcastic comment which the regulator took seriously. Most of the posts were made on Dr Kok’s social media network under private ‘friends and friends of friends’ settings.

In one post, Dr Kok highlighted the fact that the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was “derived from the desecration from a murdered human being,” referring to a cell line from an aborted foetus. Dr Kok believed this fact to be in the public interest, particularly for Christians, many of whom choose not to take medicines derived from aborted foetuses for religious reasons.

In a comment under an article on Christian website Culture Watch condemning the use of Australian aid money to fund family planning measures (including contraception and abortion) in Africa, Dr Kok sarcastically stated,

“Soon, our civilisations will be vanquished, and the Earth will be overrun by Black people. The solution is clear: we must take “family planning” to poor countries and exterminate them before it is too late!”

The regulator condemned the statement as a call for racial violence and genocide, an allegation that Dr Kok said was covered by medical news sites, resulting in him being “defamed.” However, Dr Kok told the tribunal, “I was simply echoing the point [the article] made,” that being that the aid is a form of genocide.

Several memes by U.S. conservative satirical site the Babylon Bee digging at gender ideology and Covid restrictions were also brought up in the hearing.

Medical journalist Heather Saxena, who attended several days of the VCAT hearing, reported the contents of some of Dr Kok’s other posts which were discussed in the hearing for AusDoc (here and here):

“…Dr Kok had described doctors who performed abortions as “butchers” and then added: “What’s wrong with capital punishment for serial contract killers?”

“Dr Kok also referenced the “industrial-scale massacre of babies by doctors,” called Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital the state’s “premier baby killing facility,” and claimed that doctors who performed gender reassignment surgery were “crooks engaged in mutilation.””

In another post, Dr Kok used the term “child abuse” in reference to same-sex couples with children.

Saxena reports that the Medical Board’s argument was not that any individual post constituted professional misconduct, but that in toto, Dr Kok’s language denigrated doctors and could discourage patients from discussing certain procedures with doctors. The board’s lawyer also argued that Dr Kok’s posts encouraged violence to racial groups and expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric.

During the hearing, Dr Kok conceded some of his language was “inflammatory” and “inappropriate,” such as calling abortion doctors “serial killers,” calling gender reassignment surgery “medical butchery,” and using the term “child abuse” in connection with same-sex families.

In his witness statement, Dr Kok said that some things he wrote “did amount to a denigration of other medical practitioners,” and that he would refrain from using such perjoratives in the future.

However, Dr Kok defended his religious convictions, maintaining his stance that marriage is for heterosexual couples only, that gender reassignment surgery is harmful and unethical, and that he does not condone abortion. Dr Kok also defended his long standing opposition to vaccine mandates, stating “I believe in patient autonomy ... to choose or decline treatment.”

Dr Kok’s barrister, Stephen Moloney, argued that “There is no law in this country that says [Dr Kok] is not allowed to say that abortion is morally wrong,” and that speaking on medical topics was a right “given unambiguously to the practitioner under the code of conduct.”

Dr Kok also rejected the Board’s assertion that his public stance on gender, abortion and sexuality would deter patients from seeking care.

“It might undermine their willingness to see me, but I’m not sure it would undermine their willingness to see other doctors,” he said, adding that if a patient asked him about abortion, he would refer them to a GP in his practice who provided abortion care.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-147356247

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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Strange warning abut speech from the EU

He has obviously never heard about the Peace of Westphalia  -- but I guess that 1648 is a long time ago

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has sent a letter to X CEO Elon Musk, warning him that his forthcoming conversation with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump could violate the EU Digital Services Act—an Orwellian piece of legislation that authorizes censorship of online content for the usual lying, humbug rationale that has now been normalized in what was once a civilization that valued free speech.

Underlying Commissioner Breton’s letter was his probability assessment that Elon Musk and Donald Trump would, in their conversation, promote hatred, disorder, and incitement to violence. Based on his probability assessment, Breton took it upon himself to warn Musk and Trump that they needed to exercise due diligence in making sure that they did not indulge in such speech.

Given that Breton is not, like Kamala Harris, suffering from a lack of native intelligence, it appears that he has been seized by the Dummheit syndrome described by Bonhoeffer. His letter to Elon Musk may be the stupidest thing I’ve read all year. Given the moronic deluge that pours from the world’s capitals these days, this is really saying something.

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/eu-commissioner-makes-fool-of-himself

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All my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

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

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

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

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

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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