Thursday, September 30, 2021



YouTube Forbids All Anti-Vax Content in Stunning, Orwellian Nightmare

Compelled vaccination is the big topic these days. I have myself been vaccinated but forced medical procedures are a very dubious idea. Do we now not own our own bodies? There should be freedom to discuss that at least

The technological oligarchy has arrived, ladies and gentlemen, and our freedom of speech is eroding in rapid fashion.

YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing website whose entire existence is dependent upon making ad revenue off of your content, is now refusing to allow anyone to upload anything that even so much as resembles an anti-vaccine sentiment.

YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who experts say are partially responsible for helping seed the skepticism that’s contributed to slowing vaccination rates across the country.

The ban was widespread.

As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous. The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox.

And so, where the Constitution guarantees us free speech, these enormous companies have consolidated enough bandwidth to render our rights moot. This isn’t democracy, nor is it freedom. Not in the least.

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‘It's not woke': Calls for more change to cricket lexicon after batsman dismissed

Christina Matthews, one of Australian cricket's leading administrators, has a blunt message for those put out by the game's move to gender-specific terminology: "get with the times, or get out".

The Western Australia Cricket chief, and multiple World Cup winner Lisa Sthalekar have welcomed the dismissal of the terms "batsman" and "batsmen", and called for further change to the game's lexicon.

The Marylebone Cricket Club have sent the gendered terms to the pavilion, officially amending the laws of the game by replacing them with the gender-neutral "batter" and "batters".

The move has been criticised on social media as political correctness by some, including prominent UK media identity Piers Morgan, though male players and coaches have increasingly used batter instead of batsmen. Former Australia great Ricky Ponting regularly used the gender-neutral term during his reign as captain in the 2000s.

Traditionalists may have to get used to more change with terms such as "third man", "12th man", "nightwatchman" and the "maiden" now under the microscope, though these are not officially recognised by the game.

The fielding position third man is commonly referred to as "third" by commentators, a term Matthews and Sthalekar supports. Similarly, Matthews is also in favour of the 12th man being shortened to 12th, and the nightwatchman turned into the "nightwatcher".

Matthews says the term maiden is problematic. Applied in cricket to describe an over where no run is scored, it was historically used to refer to a girl or unmarried woman, or a female virgin.

One term Sthalekar would like to see binned is the "man of the match", to be replaced with the "player of the match".

"We don't say woman of the match, we say player of the match, so why not use the term across both? I hate that," Sthalekar said.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Wednesday, September 29, 2021



Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey blasts Facebook's removal of her campaign page: 'Big Tech has gotten out of hand'

Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey took a hardline approach to Big Tech this week, blasting Facebook over the temporary removal of her gubernatorial campaign page and accusing it of working alongside President Joe Biden's administration to stop conservatives from speaking out on things like opposition to federal coronavirus vaccine mandates.

Speaking with Fox News Digital, Ivey reiterated she strongly supported Alabamians taking the vaccine, but continued to reject any attempts by the federal government to mandate vaccinations. She blamed her opposition to those mandates as the reason for Facebook taking action against her page – Facebook has called it a mistake – and declared that "Big Tech has gotten out of hand" in its attitude towards conservatives.

"I've been against mandates since day one," Ivey said, before adding she was one of the earliest leaders to speak out on the importance of people getting vaccinated. "I took the vaccine along with state health policy, and took the second shot, and I've even had the booster."

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Facebook censorship

John Stossel

I just sued Facebook. I didn't want to sue. I hate lawsuits. I tried for a year to reach someone at Facebook to fix things, but Facebook wouldn't.

Here's the problem: Facebook uses "independent fact-checkers" to try to reduce fake news on their site.

That's a noble goal. Unfortunately, at least one Facebook "fact-checker" is a climate-alarmist group that cleverly uses its Facebook connections to stop debate.

Facebook is a private company. It has every right to cut me off. But Facebook does not have the right to just lie about me, yet that's exactly what Facebook and its "fact-checker" did. That's defamation, and it's just wrong.

My video this week shows videos that Facebook throttled.

The defamation started with the fact-checker, a group called Climate Feedback. They didn't like that my video reported facts suggesting that government mismanagement probably played a bigger role in causing California's wildfires than climate change.

Climate Feedback got Facebook to censor this as "misleading" and link to a page that (SET ITAL)still(END ITAL) declares the following quote misleading: "Forest fires are caused by poor management. Not by climate change."

As if that were something I said. But I didn't! I never said that. In fact, I said: "Climate change has made things worse. California has warmed 3 degrees."

I've worked at NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. All would have fired me if I falsely attributed a quote!

I emailed Climate Feedback's editor. She didn't respond. But two of three scientists listed as their "reviewers" agreed to interviews.

Stefan Doerr of Swansea University surprised me by saying he'd never even watched my video! "If this is implying that we have reviewed the video," said Doerr, "this is clearly wrong."

Another reviewer, Zeke Hausfather of The Breakthrough Institute, hadn't seen the video either. "I certainly did not write a Climate Feedback piece reviewing your segment."

After he watched it, I asked, "Is (misleading) a fair label?"

"I don't necessarily think so," he replied. "While there are plenty of debates around how much to emphasize fire management versus climate change, your piece clearly discussed that both were at fault."

Still, neither Climate Feedback nor Facebook will change their smear.

Then things got worse. I re-aired a video on climate change myths titled "Are We Doomed?"

Three climate scientists argue that we are not "doomed" because we can adapt to climate change. They invited climate alarmists to debate them. None would.

Climate Feedback got Facebook to throttle that video, too, and declare it "partly false." Why?

Only one of their reviewers agreed to an interview. Patrick Brown of San Jose State University didn't like that my video suggests America can adjust to rising sea levels. He claimed sea levels could rise 200 feet.

"You're citing an extreme," I point out. "The (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) doesn't consider that likely."

"I don't know if they assess sea level rise out to 1,000 years," he responds. They don't.

It's absurd that Facebook lets Climate Feedback censor me over something that MIGHT happen in 1,000 years.

Climate Feedback also cited my video for questioning the claim that hurricanes have gotten stronger.

But Brown, Climate Feedback's own reviewer, said, "That's wrong that you were criticized for saying that. ... The IPCC (doesn't) claim that (hurricanes) ... are increasing."

Later, Brown told us I was cited for "omission of contextual information, rather than specific 'facts' being 'wrong.'"

So, their "fact-check" wasn't about actual facts?

Still, they rated my video "partly false," which Facebook defines as content that "includes some factual inaccuracies." My video did not contain any factual inaccuracies, and they know it.

Climate Feedback and its parent group, Science Feedback, use Facebook to censor lots of responsible people, such as science writers John Tierney, Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg.

Facebook has every right to choose who can use its platform.

But Facebook does not have a legal right to knowingly and recklessly lie about what I say. That's defamation.

I hope my lawsuit will make them think twice about doing it again -- to me or to anyone else.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Tuesday, September 28, 2021




Australia: Bid to remove ‘racist’ slave trader Ben Boyd’s name from Sydney street fails

The Kanakas were NOT slaves. They were contracted labourers. They were free to return to Kanaky at the end of their contract. Most did

Calls to remove the name of slave trader Ben Boyd, who was responsible for ‘blackbirding’, from a leafy Sydney suburb have failed.

North Sydney Council will keep the name of Ben Boyd Rd in Neutral Bay and Cremorne, on the lower north shore of Sydney, after a former Green’s staffer created a petition to change the name.

The petition caused a stir in the community with the council then asked to consider a name change.

The road was named after a colonial entrepreneur who lived in Neutral Bay in the 1840s.

Boyd was known for pioneering the practice of using cheap labour from the South Sea islands to work in Australia. It is known as ‘blackbirding’.

After the petition was circulated the council asked constituents for their thoughts.

A survey was put forward and 2318 residents responded, 54.7 per cent opposed the renaming of the street while 44.3 per cent were in favour. Just 1.6 per cent were unsure.

The papers also said there were 20 council installed street signs referencing Ben Boyd Rd. The cost of replacing these would be about $6200.

There are also two plaques in the community commemorating Ben Boyd with the council preparing to alter these.

“The larger of these are soon to be reinstalled with another plaque outlining the story of Boyd’s place in Australia’s historical narrative,” council papers said.

“With that, the naming of Ben Boyd Road will be put in context, and residents and visitors can decide for themselves the nature of the man and his deeds.”

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Joe Biden 'painted in a bad light' by ban on Fox News' coverage of border crisis

The Australian's Sophie Elsworth says the suspension of Fox News' coverage on the US-Mexico border crisis doesn't paint "poor sleepy President Joe Biden" in a good light.

It comes after the US Federal Aviation Administration banned Fox News from flying a drone to document the thousands of immigrants camping at the southern border.

The two-week temporary suspension came shortly after Fox News aired evidence of the crisis. Authorities soon backed down and Fox News was able to continue reporting on the issue.

"Imagine if this was happening under former president Donald Trump's watch," Ms Elsworth said. "This is censorship at its finest

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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NYT Quietly Edited Comment About 'Pro-Israel... Influential Lobbyists and Rabbis' When Covering AOC's Tears

As Katie covered yesterday, squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had a meltdown on the House floor after changing her vote against funding the Israel Iron Dome to "present." That's not the only thing that was changed, though. Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Brian Flood reported for Fox News that a piece by Catie Edmonson for The New York Times contained an edit with regards to AOC's vote.

"Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to 'present.' The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis,"

Edmonson's piece at one point read.

It now reads: "Minutes before the vote closed, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tearfully huddled with her allies before switching her vote to 'present.' The tableau underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party.

["such as influential lobbyists and rabbis" was omitted]

Subsequent passages of Edmonson's reporting, which still remain, are also noteworthy, in how they frame Democratic leadership's motivations for the vote:

Privately, some progressive lawmakers were furious with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, who pushed for the vote on Iron Dome funding after it was removed from the broader spending bill this week.

His maneuver appeared to be intended to calm Israeli officials, who had watched with alarm as the fight unfolded on Capitol Hill and had closely followed previous efforts by young, liberal lawmakers to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel.

After Yair Lapid, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called Mr. Hoyer and emphasized the need for the House to approve the request as soon as possible, the congressman assured him that progressives’ initial revolt was no more than a “technical delay,” according to an account of the call released by Mr. Lapid’s office. Hours later, Mr. Hoyer announced that the House would vote to approve the funding later in the week.

Edmonson also made reference to a memorable floor speech from Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), with her reporting that the congressman gave "an angry speech" in response to anti-Semitic remarks from squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

Reagan had reported on the exchange after it took place on Thursday.

"I will not support an effort to enable war crimes and human rights abuses and violence," the congresswoman claimed. "We cannot be talking only about Israelis’ need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes."

The only edit or correction which appears at the bottom of the piece, as of Friday afternoon, is from September 23, is as follows: "An earlier version of this article misstated the final tally for the funding vote. It was 420 to 9, not 490 to 9."

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Behold the Anti-Free-Speech ACLU

Once the nation’s leading defender of free speech, the ACLU is now little more than an activist for “progressive” causes.

We suppose it’s to the credit of the American Civil Liberties Union that it hasn’t yanked down that smoking-gun Twitter post. Of course, it’s to the deep and everlasting disgrace of the ACLU that anyone there felt it to be an acceptable post in the first place.

At issue is an artistically rendered quote from former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a quote the ACLU bowdlerized because it contained scientifically accurate (and therefore deeply offensive) language from the obviously insufficiently awokened RBG.

This is what Ginsberg, herself a former ACLU lawyer, said to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1993 during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings:

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choice.

And this is the way the one-time free-speech champions at the ACLU quoted her in their September 18 tweet:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person’s] life, to either [their] well-being and dignity. … When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.”

The indignity. Ginsberg must be thrashing about in her grave. And that army of Notorious RBG acolytes? They must be equally aggrieved. Or perhaps not. After all, what’s a little historical whitewashing among “progressives,” especially those who’ve abandoned their once vigorous defense of free speech from all across the political spectrum?

Agree or disagree on her larger abortion argument, there’s a reason why Ginsberg said what she said, and not what today’s ACLU desperately wishes she’d said. That reason? Women bear children. Men don’t. To argue otherwise does violence to biology specifically and to science generally.

“Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis,” went the New York Times headline on June 6 of this year. But we don’t see a crisis here so much as a surrender, a capitulation. As the Times went on to note, it was the ACLU that defended the free speech rights of American neo-Nazis in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, the home of many World War II Holocaust survivors. But one wonders: Would today’s ACLU go to bat so boldly for free speech?

We think not. And former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser seems to agree with us. As Reason’s Nick Gillespie writes: “Glasser says he’s worried about the future of both free expression and the organizations that defend it. In 2018, a leaked ACLU memo offered guidelines for case selection that retreated from the group’s decades-long content-neutral stance, citing as a reason to decline a case ‘the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values.’ Glasser fears that, by becoming more political and less absolutist when it comes to defending speech, the ACLU might be shrugging off its hard-won legacy.”

Hmm, ya think?

And does anyone else see the slippery slope inherent in the two words “or others” that appear directly after “white supremacists” in that leaked memo? For example, Donald Trump has been tarred by the deranged Left as a white supremacist; shouldn’t the ACLU therefore refuse to protect his speech when Big Tech shuts him down? And if the ACLU refuses to defend Donald Trump’s free speech rights, then by what rationale would it defend the rights of those who support Donald Trump? Or those who espouse conservative views? Or those who support the white supremacist Republican Party in general?

It’s simple, really. Leftists used to be in favor of free speech when they believed their ideas could stand up in the marketplace. These days, though, when they have to argue that men can become women and women men, their arguments become untenable.

And so free speech itself becomes untenable.

What we’ve said before applies to the Left, to Democrats, to Big Tech, and to the ACLU: They wouldn’t need to censor us if they weren’t afraid of losing the argument.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Sunday, September 26, 2021



Fury at "Lancet" over calling women ‘bodies with vaginas’ on its cover

The Lancet medical journal has been accused of sexism after describing women as “bodies with vaginas” on the cover of its latest edition.

A tweet of the front page prompted a wave of criticism, with academics cancelling subscriptions and resigning as reviewers, doctors condemning the phrase as “dehumanising” and activists suggesting the term was “unhelpful” for broader debates about inclusivity.

The cover refers to an article, titled “Periods on Display”, that reviews an exhibition at London’s Vagina Museum on the history of menstruation. The writer refers to “women” four times in the piece, but uses the phrase “bodies with vaginas” once.

It is a quote including this latter phrase that The Lancet’s editors chose to use on the front page. “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected,” it says.

While the language seems to be an attempt at inclusivity, it has prompted a backlash, with some academics suggesting they will never work with the journal again.

“Just wrote [to] The Lancet to tell them to take me off their list of statistical reviewers and cancel my subscription and never contact me about anything ever again,” Prof David Curtis, a retired psychiatrist and honorary professor of genetics at University College London, wrote on Twitter.

“Absolutely inexcusable language to refer to women and girls.”

Dr Madeleine Ní Dhálaigh, a GP, added: “You can be inclusive without being insulting and abusive. How dare you dehumanise us with a statement like this?”

Others suggested that the journal has double standards, flagging a Twitter post on September 20 in which it referred to the 10 million “men” living with prostate cancer and pointing out they have never seen it use the phrase “bodies with penises”.

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Australia: Victoria Police censored 'vital' media coverage of Melbourne protests

Victoria Police censored vital media coverage of Melbourne's protests by banning the live-streaming of aerial footage, according to Digital Editor Jack Houghton.

On Wednesday the Civil Aviation Safety Authority approved a Victoria Police ban of all helicopters bar their own flying over Melbourne CBD.

"A media blackout," Mr Houghton said. "A pathetic attempt by an over-zealous police force which lost control of its own city.

"You deserve to know what's happening in your city every moment of every day, and in my experience, police only ever want you to stop filming when they are worried about stuffing something up."

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Friday, September 24, 2021




Gammon, remoaner, Karen and snowflake are among the words added to Ofcom’s list of offensive terms

'Karen' and 'Gammon' are among some of the latest words added to a list of offensive terms by the UK's communications regulator Ofcom, which has begun ranking politically-charged terms for the first time.

'Karen', typically used to refer to an entitled middle-class, and normally white woman, and 'gammon', a term referring to right-wing, pro-Brexit men, are joined by words such as 'libtard', 'remoaner', 'snowflake' and 'boomer' on Ofcom's list of words which could upset viewers and listeners.

Racial, anatomical and religious terms are already on Ofcom's list of potentially offensive words whose impact broadcasters must bear in mind when producing programmes.

The regulator said that it would begin considering new terms when reviewing complaints made by audiences, declaring that the changing meaning of words and the increasing usage of politically-charged insults meant broadcasters would be urged to monitor their inclusion of such words from now on.

LBC host and former BBC Newsnight presenter James O'Brien was brought to the attention of Ofcom for his recent use of the term 'gammon' to deride the right-wing, and this example has been used to demonstrate how such political terms can be deployed negatively.

Ofcom's Director of Standards and Audience Protection Adam Baxter said: 'People's views on offensive language can change significantly over time.

'So, to ensure we're setting and enforcing our rules effectively, it is essential that we keep up to date with how viewers and listeners think and feel.

The regulator announced that they carried out audience research and a nationwide survey to estimate the impact of political terms and phrases, the findings of which suggested that these labels only cause 'mild offence' when compared with racially or religiously-charged terms and foul language.

The research also revealed that political labels were not recognised by as many survey respondents despite their rapidly expanding presence, particularly on social media sites.

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Hawley Calls on Google to Explain Why It ‘Seemingly Censored’ Pro-Life Ads

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) sent a letter to Google on Wednesday demanding answers about why it has “seemingly censored” ads by pro-life organizations Live Action and Choose Life Marketing.

Hawley wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai asking, “At what rate are ads produced by crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life advocacy organizations, and firms that work with them deemed ineligible for distribution on Google’s platform?”

The senator also questioned what “contacts” Google executives or other leaders have had with “abortion advocacy organizations in the last month.”

“When I spoke with Mark Zuckerberg about a similar issue in September 2019, he acknowledged the danger of bias on the parts of content reviewers in this area, particularly where pro-life activist groups like Live Action are concerned,” Hawley wrote. “But if your company’s behavior is any indication, those concerns have gone unaddressed.”

He suggested that Google “appears to have taken a page out of the progressive left playbook and has started targeting pregnancy resource centers and pro-life activist organizations for disfavor.”’

The Missouri Republican said that Choose Life Marketing, a company from his home state that works with pro-life pregnancy resource centers, found that its ads were not running, “even though Google designated them as eligible to run.”

Hawley wrote that the company was “unable to obtain an explanation” from Google and noted that “even a cursory investigation reveals numerous examples of Planned Parenthood advertising directly to internet users that it offers abortions, contrary to Google’s stated policies.”

The letter came one day after Live Action President Lila Rose said that Google had blocked 18 of her organization’s ads, including one promoting the abortion reversal pill.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Thursday, September 23, 2021




'Batter' to replace 'batsman' as Laws of Cricket amended

I thought that "batter" is something you cook fish in

MCC has announced that the gender-neutral terms "batter" and "batters" will replace "batsman" and "batsmen" after the Laws of Cricket were amended.

The changes - which are effective immediately - have been approved by the MCC Committee, a move which it says has been made in an effort to "reinforce cricket's status as an inclusive game for all".

The matter was previously addressed in 2017, but it was decided not to make a change at that point.

Jamie Cox, Assistant Secretary (Cricket and Operations) at MCC, said: "MCC believes in cricket being a game for all and this move recognises the changing landscape of the game in modern times.

"Use of the term "batter" is a natural evolution in our shared cricketing language and the terminology has already been adopted by many of those involved in the sport. It is the right time for this adjustment to be recognised formally and we are delighted, as the Guardians of the Laws, to announce these changes today."

The women's game has grown at all levels around the world since the 2017 redraft, which came into effect shortly after England won the World Cup on home soil.

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Would YOU be offended at being called 'childless'? Women brand terms like 'childfree' 'crass' and 'insensitive'

Non-mother" does not seem like a very pleasant alternative

Women without children were slammed for being 'over sensitive' after they took issue with the terms 'childless' and 'childfree' in a heated online debate.

The Mumsnet thread was kickstarted by a British woman who said she disliked the term 'childless' after it was used by TV presenter Katie Piper in a recent Loose Women debate.

The post was met with agreement by dozens of other women who described the term as 'crass'. They also said the word 'childfree', sometimes used as an alternative' was 'dehumanising' to children because it made them sound like a 'commodity'.

However others hit back against the argument, noting it appeared they wanted to be 'offended over nothing' and questioned what term would be appropriate if 'childless' and 'childfree' were ruled to be too offensive.

A further poster felt more strongly, saying: 'I think childfree is far more offensive - and I don't think many words are really offensive either.

'Being free of something implies that it is rather a bad or undesirable thing. Bedbug-free, pain-free, disease-free.

'Can you imagine saying it about any other group of people? Woman-free, Asian-free, lesbian-free? It's only possible because many think of children as a sort of lifestyle choice rather than as persons.

However others questioned why the issue needed to be debated, with one writing: 'Why is there this culture of outrage at everything these days?'

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Wednesday, September 22, 2021



CDC Pushes ‘Woke’ Words

In the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) evidently has the time to publish a guide for language “principles for inclusive communication.” Published on August 24, the new guide demonstrates that the virus of leftist “wokeness” has infected the nation’s primary disease agency.

The new language usage guidelines stress that “health equity is intersectionality” and therefore, the CDC contends, words such as “diabetics” and “the homeless” are “dehumanizing language.” Never mind the fact that such words are scientifically or socially specific and accurate terms, no matter the negatives associated with those individuals finding themselves in such conditions. In other words, using language honestly and accurately is not grounds for charges of “inequity.”

Demonstrating that its objective is to use language to push political views rather than uphold scientific accuracy, the CDC’s guide provides a list of terms — which up until a month ago were considered perfectly sufficient for providing accurate communication — to be replaced with new ambiguous terminology from the “woke” lexicon.

For example, the term “biological male/female” is to be replaced with “assigned male/female at birth.” Another word to be rejected is “inmates,” which will instead become the unwieldy term “people who are incarcerated.” And, of course, “illegal immigrants” should never be used — rather, it’s “people with undocumented status.” Laughably, the guide claims these as examples for public health officials to “avoid jargon and use straightforward, easy to understand language.”

As it was under Barack Obama, so it is under Joe Biden. Federal government agencies like the CDC are being used to force a hard-left “woke” ideology onto the American culture at large. The reason language is explicitly attacked is because it is the primary means of controlling the political conversation.

The CDC defends its new language guidelines by hiding behind a dodge: “Nothing in the guiding principles is prescriptive.” But the guidelines themselves expose that such a claim is merely a diversion. The first sentence states: “To build a healthier America for all, we must confront the systems and polices that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities.”

The clear purpose of the CDC’s guide is not to pursue clearer and more scientifically accurate public communication. Rather, it is to indoctrinate the public into Marxist equity ethic via the use of “inclusive” terminology that, ironically, is anything but inclusive.

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UK: List of new 71 personalised number plates banned by DVLA for being too rude

Hundreds of requests for personalised licence plates are put in by eager drivers every year, but many are turned down because they contain swearing, vulgar words or are just too cheeky.

The DVLA offers tens of millions of registrations on its website, with the Swansea -based agency earning up to £160m a year from the lucrative business.

But staff must always be scrupulous in assessing requests, as mischievous drivers will use a combination of letters and numbers to come up with phrases that are likely to cause offence.

The '71' number plate launched on September 1 2021.

A spokesman said: “The vast majority of registration numbers are made available but the agency holds back any combinations that may cause offence, embarrassment, or are in poor taste.

“Many people enjoy displaying a personalised registration number and there are over 50m registrations available on our website with almost endless possibilities of combinations to suit a person’s taste, interests and budget.”

Following the submission of a Freedom of Information request, Wales Online can now reveal the latest set of registrations requests that have been turned down, on the grounds they were too rude, funny or unsuitable.

What are your thoughts on this ? Let us know in the comments below

Full list

**71 ARD

**71 OSR

**71 OSS

**71 URD

**71 WAT

*A71 RYN

*A71 YAN

*B71 CH*

*B71 TCH

*C71 NNT

*C71 NTS

*D71 CK*

*F71 ART

etc.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Tuesday, September 21, 2021




Calling women 'birds' is 'plainly sexist', British judge rules

Calling women 'birds' is 'plainly sexist' and it is 'foolish' to use the term even jokingly, a judge has ruled.

Judge John Crosfill said using the phrase ironically at work in an attempt at humour is 'misplaced'.

The ruling came in the case of a Barclays investment banker who won a sex discrimination claim after her boss repeatedly called women 'birds'.

Anca Lacatus said James Kinghorn continued to use the term even after she told him to stop as he was trying to make her feel uncomfortable, a tribunal heard.

Mr Kinghorn defended his use of the word by saying he was being light-hearted but the tribunal ruled the term is 'plainly sexist,' and it was 'foolish' to think anyone would find it funny.

The East London tribunal heard that Ms Lacatus would have been reluctant to complain about her boss's sexist language out of fear it would have been damaging to her career.

She is now set to receive compensation for his treatment of her.

The Romanian worked as a £46,000 a year analyst for Barclays in what was her first job in investment banking after completing an Investments and Finance master's as Queen Mary University in London.

In a statement, Ms Lacatus said her boss Mr Kinghorn referred to a female employee as a 'bird' in February 2018.

She said that she immediately told him off for using the phrase but he then continued to say it in an effort to make her feel uncomfortable.

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Mother's fury at explicit school book with sexual details she ‘had to Google’

A US mother took a school board meeting by surprise when she took to the podium to share her anger at discovering a library book that described anal sex.

The outraged woman, identified as Kara Bell, took to the lectern last Wednesday to read out a racy extract from the book “Out of Darkness” leading school officials to cut her microphone.

The furious Texas mum told the Lake Travis Independent School District board that she had plans to discuss the need for a second high school but instead spoke about the sexually explicit book in two schools’ libraries, The Sun reports.

Bell read out the passage from the book, written by Ashley Hope Perez, where it depicted “cornholing” which she said she later found out was another term for anal sex.

“Not going to lie, I had to Google ‘cornhole’ because I have the game in the back of my yard,” Bell said. “But according to Wikipedia, ‘cornhole’ is a sexual slang vulgarism for anus.”

The board meeting, which was streamed online, then hears Bell complain that she doesn’t want her children to learn about “anal sex” in middle school. “I’ve never had anal sex,” she continued. “I don’t want to have anal sex. “I don’t want my kids having anal sex. I want you to start focusing on education and not public health.”

Her microphone was then cut off but that didn’t stop the mum from demanding the removal of the book.

The following day, local media reported that the school had removed the book from the library.

“A district possesses significant discretion to determine the content of its school libraries,” a spokesperson for the district told the news station.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Monday, September 20, 2021

12 People Canceled by the Left After Expressing Conservative Views


Cancel culture runs rampant in today’s America. A 10-year-old tweet that mysteriously “resurfaces,” a past campaign donation, or even the slightest critique of any of the left’s sacred tenets seems to be enough to draw the attention of an angry mob—or even get someone fired.

With more and more people being “canceled” by the left, it’s important to remember those folks who’ve lost their livelihoods to cancel culture.

Here are 12 victims of cancel culture who were targeted for voicing a conservative view

1. John Gibson

Gibson, the former president of American gaming studio Tripwire Interactive, became a victim of the petulant mob when he lost his job for tweeting in support of Texas’ new pro-life legislation.  

“Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat,” Gibson tweeted earlier this month, “As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer.”

Less than three days later, Gibson was cancelled.  

“The comments given by John Gibson are of his own opinion, and do not reflect those of Tripwire Interactive as a company,” read a statement by Tripwire interactive announcing Gibson’s departure. “His comments disregarded the values of our whole team, our partners and much of our broader community.”

2. Nathan Silvester

Silvester was a police officer working in Bellevue, Idaho, who was fired after he posted a TikTok mocking NBA star LeBron James for his statements following the death of Ma’Khia Bryant.  

After Bryant, a 16-year-old black girl, was fatally shot by a white police officer in southeast Columbus, Ohio, James tweeted a photo of the officer with the caption “You’re next. #accountability,” per CNN.

The shooting occurred just 30 minutes before the verdict in the George Floyd case.

After Silvester’s TikTok clip went viral, he was suspended for a week without pay, pending further investigation.  

In an interview with a local TV station KMVT, Silvester said, “I started to hear rumors through the grapevine that the mayor was brainstorming how he could terminate me and avoid any political blowback on his part, and so I kind of anticipated this was going to be the result. I was going to lose my job.”

3. Scott Cawthon

Cawthon was the creator of the hugely successful “Five Nights at Freddy’s” video game series who was cancelled in June after fans decided to search Open Secrets, a website that lists political donations, for information regarding his campaign contributions.

When it was revealed that Cawthon had donated money to several Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump, calls for him to retire began to circulate online.

Initially, Cawthon tried to weather the storm, and refused to apologize, posting, “I’m a Republican. I’m a Christian. I’m pro-life. I believe in God,” Cawthon continued, “I also believe in equality, and in science, and in common sense. Despite what some may say, all of those things can go together. That’s not an apology or promise to change, it’s the way it’s always been.”

Eventually the pressure became too much, and Cawthon announced that he would be leaving the series. “I miss making games for my kids, I miss doing it just for fun … All of this is to say that I am retiring.”

4. David Flynn

Flynn was the popular head football coach at Dedham High School in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Flynn and his wife sent an email to school officials expressing their concern that their daughter’s world geography and history classes contained curriculum and materials that were unrelated to the topics and were inherently political.

Per the Washington Free Beacon, “Middle school history teacher Kim Randall created an avatar of herself for her online classroom that wore a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and used materials that depicted police officers as ‘risks’ to black people and black people as ‘risks’ to white people.”

After a series of meetings with the school’s superintendent and committee members, Flynn and his wife decided the best course of action would be to move their two children from the school district and send them to a private Catholic school.

Flynn lost his job in January when he was told that his contract would not be renewed, with school officials citing “significant philosophical differences.” Flynn said that he had “never been provided any indication” that he would be fired.

5. Gina Carano

Carano was fired from her leading role on Disney and Lucasfilm’s “The Mandalorian” after the actress posted a story on her Instagram comparing the current political climate to Nazi Germany.

Lucasfilm cut ties with the actress, writing in a statement, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano’s fans were quick to point out her outspokenly leftist costar Pedro Pascal had shared a meme comparing the Trump administration’s immigration policies to Nazi concentration camps, yet was able to keep his job.

Carano was able to rebound and is currently working with the Daily Wire on a new film.

6. Kieran Bhattacharya

Bhattacharya was a student at the University of Virginia School of Medicine who was banned from campus after he questioned a speaker’s definition of microaggressions during a panel discussion.

After an assistant professor logged a complaint about Bhattacharya’s questions during the panel, an administrator mandated that he get counseling before being able to return to class. When  Bhattacharya refused, he was suspended and barred from returning to campus, Reason reported.

Bhattacharya is now suing the school for violating his First Amendment rights.

7. Ryan Anderson  

Anderson is the author of the bestselling book “When Harry Became Sally,” which details the rise in transgender and LGBT ideology in the U.S. The book that was removed from Amazon’s digital marketplace after the company claimed it framed “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

In a statement made to The Daily Signal, Anderson argued against this accusation, stating “The phrase ‘mental illness’ does occur in the book twice—but not in my own voice: once quoting a ‘transwoman’ writing in The New York Times, and once quoting the current University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins.”

The book is still unavailable on Amazon.

8. Kate Hartson

Hartson was the editorial director of the Center Street imprint, a conservative publishing entity under the larger Hachette Book Group umbrella. She was known for buying the rights to publish books by controversial figures associated with former president Donald Trump, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and Corey Lewandowski.

As more and more liberals within print media began expressing their resentment toward the former president and all things associated with him, views like Hartson’s became more unwelcome.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Hachette shifted focus and promised “no hate speech, no incitement to violence, no false narratives,” as reported by the New York Times.

Coincidentally, it was slightly before Hachette made this announcement to their team that Hartson was fired.

9. Austin Tong

Tong was a student at Fordham University in New York who came under fire for a series of social media posts he made that went against leftist orthodoxy, as reported by the Fordham Observer.

During last summer’s riots, Tong posted a photo of the slain retired police captain David Dorn, a black man who died while responding to a looting in St. Louis, Missouri, along with the caption, “Y’all a bunch of hypocrites,” referencing the fact that Dorn’s death didn’t spark the same amount of outcry among protestors as other high-profile deaths.

The day after, Tong posted an image of himself wielding a gun captioned, “Don’t tread on me. #198964.” June 4, 1989, is the date of the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre. For Tong, a Chinese immigrant, the photo was a symbol of resistance to tyranny.

His fellow students and school administrators took the photo differently.

As a result of the photo and social media posts, Tong was banned from coming to Fordham’s campus without permission, and barred from joining any extracurriculars. As part of Tong’s punishment, he was told he had to complete a series of implicit bias trainings.

Tong is currently suing the school for violating his First Amendment rights, per The Fire.

10. Peter Vlaming  

Vlaming was a French teacher at West Point High School in Virginia who was fired for not using a transgender student’s preferred pronouns.

In an interview with The Daily Signal, Vlaming said, “I explained to my principal that I couldn’t in good conscience pronounce masculine pronouns to refer to a girl. He gave me an official written reprimand that said it was the first step in a process that would lead to my termination.”


Eventually, the West Point School Board voted unanimously to fire Vlaming.

The former French teacher is currently bringing his case to the Virginia Supreme Court, per Christian Broadcasting Network.

11. Timothy Gordon

Gordon was a teacher at Garces Memorial High School, a private, Catholic school in Bakersfield, California, and is the author of the book “Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome.” He was fired from his job after he made comments critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, specifically calling it a terrorist organization.

After his comments became more widely known, there was fierce pushback from the other members of the Garces Memorial staff. A petition demanding Gordon’s termination began making its rounds throughout the school, leading to his eventual firing.

“Black Lives Matter themselves say they are a threat to Western family structure, namely the Christian family structure,” Gordon said in an interview with British magazine The Spectator.

In an earlier interview with radio host Richard Beene on “The Richard Beene Show,” Gordon solidified his position, saying, “They oppose themselves to Christianity, which is beset on all sides by hatred from the secular left, but it’s also been beset from within by a kind of Stockholm syndrome masochism which you’ve seen by my firing at Garces”

12. Adrianna San Marco

San Marco was a student at Syracuse University in New York who lost her job writing for her local newspaper after she wrote an op-ed piece for another conservative outlet denying the existence of institutional racism and that police unfairly targeted black people, as reported by Fox News.

San Marco’s former editor-in-chief, Casey Darnell, argued that “Dismissing the existence of racism, whether institutional or otherwise, dismisses the lived experiences of people of color, especially our black community members,” and that “San Marco’s article reinforces false and dangerous stereotypes of Black people as criminals, and dismisses that police officers kill black people at disproportionately higher rates than white people.”

In a Fox News interview conducted after her firing, San Marco stood by her piece, saying, “Now more than ever I feel confident in my views and research. There is nothing I would have done differently. I stand by my analysis.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/09/19/12-people-canceled-by-the-left-after-expressing-conservative-views/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
 
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Sunday, September 19, 2021



Amazon Reverses Ad Ban for Book Investigating BLM, Cites ‘Inaccurately Enforced’ Policies

Amazon on Thursday reversed its earlier decision to block an advertisement for a new book that is critical of the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it had not properly enforced its own policies.

“BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution” is the latest book by Mike Gonzalez, a former reporter and opinion editor for The Wall Street Journal who is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.

The Heritage Foundation this week attempted to buy an ad on the digital platform of Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, to promote Gonzalez’s book. However, Amazon notified Heritage on Tuesday that it had rejected the ad.

After Heritage officials appealed, Amazon reversed itself.

“Our policies were inaccurately enforced, and the book is now being advertised,” an Amazon spokeswoman told The Daily Signal in an email Thursday morning. “We are providing training to ensure our teams are clear on our policies.”

Amazon’s ad moderation team made the error and corrected it, the spokeswoman said later in the day.

“Our policies were not enforced correctly in this case,” she said. “We fixed the error, communicated with the advertiser [Heritage], and the book is now being advertised. We will be providing additional training to ensure our teams are clear on our policies and how to enforce them in the future.”

Gonzalez said he was pleased with the news about his book, which was published Sept. 7 and tops Amazon’s own Black and African American History category, but still has questions.

“I’m glad they reversed their decision. But who made the decision in the first place?” Gonzalez said in an email to The Daily Signal. “Was it someone who just disagreed with its content and decided to ban it? Amazon has incredible power. It needs clear rules that are not political [or] partisan.”

Amazon had notified Heritage in an email message at 3:48 a.m. EDT Tuesday that the think tank’s ad for Gonzalez’s book “no longer complies with our current Creative Acceptance Policies.”

“Specifically for the following reasons: Your ad contains book/s or content that is not allowed. Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted,” Amazon’s notice to Heritage says. “Please remove this content from your ad.”

The Heritage Foundation appealed Amazon’s action.

About 3 a.m. EDT Thursday, The Daily Signal published a news report on Amazon’s decision to censor Heritage’s ad for the Black Lives Matter book.

Amazon Advertiser Support sent a message to The Heritage Foundation at 10:50 a.m. EDT Thursday, saying:

We have determined that the ad was incorrectly rejected from our end. Thanks for explaining the issue to us, and we apologize for the inconvenience caused. The ad was remoderated and is now in approved status.

Amazon apparently did not at any time block Gonzalez’s book about Black Lives Matter from being sold on the website, only Heritage’s advertising for it.

The incident shows that some parties, but hardly all, can push major technology companies to respond to customer complaints, said Kara Frederick, a research fellow in Heritage’s Center for Technology Policy.

“This episode is a reminder that while sometimes Big Tech can be pressured to respond in certain cases of wrongdoing, there are so many more instances where those without the resources or large-enough public profile simply have to live with the arbitrary decisions made by these companies,” Frederick said in a public statement, adding:

The fact that this was the result of human error further demonstrates the need for Big Tech companies to establish clear, sensible, and consistent rules and policies, and then implement those rules and policies fairly across the board.

They also must be willing to publicly admit mistakes when they do occur, whether intentional or not. Big Tech’s influence over everyday American life continues to grow. It’s vital that we establish clear standards for how these companies behave, and mechanisms to hold them accountable when they don’t.

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Facebook targets German anti-lockdown movement

Facebook has cracked down on the anti-Covid restriction movement in Germany, removing dozens of accounts that contribute to “co-ordinated social harm”.

Almost 150 accounts and pages on Facebook and Instagram — linked to anti-lockdown demonstrators in the European nation — have been taken off the platform, under a new policy focused on groups that spread misinformation or incite violent.

The Querdenken movement includes vaccine and mask opponents, conspiracy theorists and some far-right extremists, and has long protested German virus measures.

One post from such an account included a debunked claim that the Covid-19 jab was responsible for creating virus variants, while another wished death upon police officers who broke up violent anti-lockdown protests in Berlin.

According to Reuters, Facebook’s security teams have expanded the tactics used to take down influence operations using fake accounts to do more wholesale shutdowns of co-ordinated groups of real-user accounts causing harm, through mass reporting or brigading.

Head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, told reporters that the social media giant has also been working for several months to use these tactics against “co-ordinated social harm”.

“Simply sharing a belief or affinity with a particular movement or group wouldn’t be enough”, though, to warrant a similar response, he said.

The changes could have a major impact on how Facebook handles organised political and social movements on its sites – after months of scrutiny over its treatment of anti-vaccine and Covid-19 misinformation.

Some Querdenken adherents have been put under surveillance by Germany domestic intelligence agency, as the movement has become increasingly radicalised and protests have started to attract neo-Nazis and other extremists.

The group is the most visible anti-lockdown movement in Germany, and has drawn thousands to its demonstrations in Berlin, earning criticism from Germany’s parliament president, Wolfgang Schäuble, who has urged people not to be fooled by “cheap slogans”.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Friday, September 17, 2021



Amazon Blocks Ad for Book Investigating Black Lives Matter

Amazon this week blocked an advertisement for a new book on Black Lives Matter leaders, claiming content that “revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted.”

“BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution” is the latest book by Mike Gonzalez, a former journalist who is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal.

The Heritage Foundation, which attempted to buy the ad for Gonzalez’s book, said that Amazon, the nation’s largest retailer, blocked it from its website.

Amazon sent a message to Heritage on Tuesday stating that the ad for Gonzalez’s book “no longer complies with our current Creative Acceptance Policies.”

“Specifically for the following reasons: Your ad contains book/s or content that is not allowed. Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted,” Amazon’s notice to Heritage says. “Please remove this content from your ad.”

Gonzalez said he wrote the book to answer questions about the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I wrote this book because most of the press refused to cover the important questions about the people and organizations behind Black Lives Matter,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “Now Amazon is trying to limit how many Americans read this book.”

Gonzalez, a former reporter and opinion editor for The Wall Street Journal, added:

The American people deserve answers to those questions, especially after the 630 or more riots that left our cities burning, businesses destroyed and billions in damage, and Americans dead.

I have to wonder if Nikole Hannah-Jones’ and Ibram X. Kendi’s books—which also sell in [Amazon’s] ‘Black and African American History’ category, where my book often outranked them in the past week—face similar constraints. Herbert Marcuse, the critical theorist who authored the essay ‘Repressive Tolerance,’ would be proud of Amazon.

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Pro-Life Group Says Google Banned Its Ads in ‘Dramatic and Unprecedented Move’

The pro-life group Live Action claimed Tuesday that Google banned “all” Live Action ads, accusing the tech company of siding “squarely with extremist pro-abortion political ideology.”

“They aren’t hiding their bias anymore,” Lila Rose, Live Action founder and president, said in a statement. “Google’s censorship baldly reveals that the corporation is in the pocket of the abortion industry.”

Live Action said in a press release that Google banned the promotion of “all” the organization’s ads, including its “Baby Olivia” ad as well as one about the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline, which is managed by a team of medical professionals, according to the pro-life group.

“By restricting scientific information related to abortion pill reversal and other life-saving options, while accepting paid ads promoting life-ending abortions, Google has chosen to operate by an outrageously dishonest and blatant double standard,” Rose said in a statement. “The consequence is devastating—more women and girls will be marketed abortions through Google platforms, without also being offered life-affirming options.”

Rose said Google “disingenuously” cited “unreliable claims” as why it banned the promotion of the abortion pill reversal ad, adding in a tweet that Live Action’s abortion pill reversal ads had been previously approved by Google and had been running for over four months, “spending over $170,000 & directing 100s of moms to the abortion pill reversal hotline.”

Rose described the purported ban as a “dramatic and unprecedented move.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Thursday, September 16, 2021



CDC pushes lunatic PC language games instead of fighting COVID

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a guide last week for “inclusive communication,” cautioning against using words like “prisoner,” “smoker,” “illegal immigrant,” “disabled” or “homeless” that the agency says could imply blame or stigma. The guide’s opening line says, “We must confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities.”

The CDC, in other words, is now about fighting “inequity” — not controlling and preventing disease.

The agency urges employees to use “they” instead of gendered pronouns like him or her, even when referring to one person. And to refer to “parents” or “expectant parents,” instead of mothers or fathers. Oh, and avoid the word “stakeholder,” because it may have “violent connotations” for certain tribes.

After making the hundreds of language changes the CDC recommends, who has time to track and defeat COVID-19?

The CDC is suffering from mission confusion. With parts of the United States considering more COVID lockdowns, Americans don’t need lessons on political correctness. They need scientific information on how to reduce the risk of being infected by this virus indoors.

That’s key to reopening workplaces and returning to normal.

Numerous new technologies are said to destroy airborne viruses, including ionization, dry hydrogen peroxide, far UVC light and others. But school administrators and office building managers don’t have a clue which ones actually work. They are flying blind.

The CDC’s thousands of scientists could provide guidance. Not that they should endorse specific brands, but they can assess competing technologies. The CDC flatly refuses to do so. Instead it cautions against using them, because they lack “an established body of peer-reviewed evidence.”

What planet is the CDC on? Peer-reviewed evidence can take years to develop. Here’s the process: An academic journal sends a submitted article to scientists around the world for review and suggested changes. Once that input is received and the article is approved, the wait goes on, because many of these journals only publish four times a year.

Glacial slowness doesn’t work in a pandemic. That’s why former President Donald Trump designed Operation Warp Speed for vaccines. The CDC’s timetable isn’t warp speed. It’s just warped. And it will doom us to failure.

As for schools, a CDC study of 169 Georgia K-5 schools found COVID cases were reduced more by improving air quality than any other intervention.

A Kaiser Health News headline in June read: “More Than 100 Missouri Schools Have Bought ‘Often-Unproven’ Air-Cleaning Technology.” The words “often unproven” come from CDC guidance. If school districts are rushing in desperation to buy equipment without enough information, blame the CDC, not the school administrators.

Peer-reviewed research on that equipment doesn’t exist yet. That is why CDC scientists should get to work assessing new technologies themselves, instead of writing speech manuals.

If the CDC wants to be politically correct, it can call its new air-quality guidance “indoor environmentalism.”

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Squaw Valley is no more

Squaw Valley - home to the 1960 Winter Olympics - became the latest US institution to yield to public pressure and change its name, dropping the 'racist and sexist' term for a Native American woman that's rooted in the Lewis and Clark era.

The Lake Tahoe-region resort in Northern California, known as the Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows Ski Resort, will now be called Palisades Tahoe, the owners announced Monday in an Instagram post.

'As much as we cherish the memories we associate with our resort name, we must accept that these emotional attachments do not justify our continuing use of a word that is widely accepted to be a racist and sexist slur,' Ron Cohen, president and COO of Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows, told CNN.

The move comes as Confederate statues around the country come tumbling down and sports franchises like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians moved to dissociate themselves from nicknames viewed as derogatory.

The popular ski resort in Northern California changed its name, which drew raise from the Washoe Tribe, who lived in area before white settlers took it over

'With the momentum of recognition and accountability we are seeing around the country, we have reached the conclusion that now is the right time to acknowledge a change needs to happen,' Cohen said.

Seven states have taken it upon themselves to ban the word from geographical location names: Minnesota, Montana, Maine, Oklahoma, Idaho, South Dakota and Oregon.

Some cities around the country have replaced 'squaw', including Phoenix, Arizona and Buffalo, New York, while others - such as Provo, Utah - are in the process of doing the same.

The name changes comes at a time when the United States is undergoing what some refer to as 'cancel culture.'

The country's racial reckoning has included Native America the removal of what some consider to be offensive Native American terms.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Wednesday, September 15, 2021



Elizabeth Warren is accused of trying to 'circumvent the Constitution' by demanding Amazon stops promoting COVID books she says 'peddle misinformation about COVID'

Her authoritarian instincts come out again

Elizabeth Warren is calling on Amazon to suppress books sold on the site that she says include 'misinformation' about coronavirus.

'Given the seriousness of this issue, I ask that you perform an immediate review of Amazon's algorithms and, within 14 days, provide both a public report on the extent to which Amazon's algorithms are directing consumers to books and other products containing COVID-19 misinformation and a plan to modify these algorithms so that they no longer do so,' Warren wrote in a letter to Amazon's new CEO Andy Jassy last week.

The progressive Massachusetts senator detailed in the letter that she and her team conducted test searches on Amazon.com with coronavirus, pandemic and vaccine-related terms.

Warren said that the search resulted in some 'top results consistently included highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures.'

She specifically called out the book 'The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal' by Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins.

'Dr. Mercola,' Warren wrote in her letter, 'has been described as 'the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online.''

'Not only was this book the top result when searching either 'COVID-19' or 'vaccine' in the categories of 'All Departments' and 'Books'; it was tagged as a 'Best Seller' by Amazon and the '#1 Best Seller' in the 'Political Freedom' category,' the senator lamented.

Mercola accused Warren of 'censorship', and claimed it is illegal for lawmakers to pressure private entities to stifle freedom of speech.

'Senator censorship?' the doctor and author wrote in a Twitter post on Thursday. 'Warren pushes Amazon to burn my best selling book with 5 star reviews. It is illegal for public officials to pressure private businesses to censor anyone in the USA!'

In a tweet Monday, Warren defended herself against criticism for her call on banning books from Amazon.

'We're in a critical moment in the fight against COVID-19, and Amazon is spreading dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and treatment. Amazon must review its online algorithms and take aggressive action to stamp out COVID-19 misinformation,' the senator posted.

Her call on Amazon to stifle books, however, has conservatives worried about continued suppression of right-leaning voices by tech companies. Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Warren just wants Amazon to 'ban books that she disagrees with.'

'Here you have a self-described liberal, who is a law professor at our premiere law school, calling for book burning. Did you think you'd live to see that?' Carlson said on his show Monday night.

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Facebook exempts secret 'whitelisted' elite from its rules and allows them to post banned content with special XCheck program

Facebook has a secret program in place that allows celebrities and powerful people to skirt the social network’s own rules, according to a bombshell report.

The Silicon Valley giant’s program, called ‘XCheck’ or ‘cross check,’ created a so-called ‘whitelist’ of celebrities who are immune from enforcement, according to The Wall Street Journal.

It was initially designed to protect the company from bad publicity in the event that it moderated content from some of the more high-profile users. Instead, critics say that it has shielded those same users from the rules that apply to the general public.

The list of protected celebrities and VIPs include Brazilian soccer star Neymar; former President Donald Trump; his son, Donald Trump Jr; Senator Elizabeth Warren; model Sunnaya Nash; and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself.

In 2019, a live-streamed employee Q&A with Zuckerberg himself was suppressed after Facebook's algorithm mistakenly ruled that it violated the company's guidelines.

Movie stars, cable talk show hosts, academics, online personalities, and anyone who has a large following is protected by 'XCheck' on both Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram. As of last year, there were 5.8 million Facebook users covered by 'XCheck.'

The program has been in place for years - well before Trump was banned from the platform after he was accused of fomenting the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

The Journal relied on internal documents provided to it by employees of the company who say that the program shields celebrities from enforcement actions that are meted out against the platform’s more than 3 billion other users.

If a VIP is believed to have violated the rules, their posts aren’t removed immediately but are instead sent to a separate system staffed by better-trained employees who then further review the content.

‘XCheck’ allowed international soccer star Neymar to post nude photos of a woman who had accused him of rape in 2019. The images were deleted by Facebook after a whole day, allowing them to be seen by Neymar’s tens of millions of his followers.

A spokesperson for Facebook told the Journal that the program 'was designed for an important reason: to create an additional step so we can accurately enforce policies on content that could require more understanding.'

An internal review found that even when Facebook does take action against protected accounts, it does so belatedly.

Last year, 'XCheck' allowed posts that violated Facebook guidelines to be viewed at least 16.4 billion times before they were finally removed, according to a document obtained by the Journal.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Tuesday, September 14, 2021



Financial Censorship

OnlyFans recently announced it would ban sexually explicit content, citing pressure from “banking partners and payout providers.” This is the latest example of a troubling pattern of financial intermediaries censoring constitutionally protected legal speech by shutting down accounts—or threatening to do so.

OnlyFans is a subscription site that allows artists, performers and other content creators to monetize their creative works—and it has become a go-to platform for independent creators of adult content. The ban on sexually explicit content has been met by an outcry from many creators who have used the platform to safely earn an income in the adult industry.

This is just the latest example of censorship by financial intermediaries. Intermediaries have cut off access to financial services for independent booksellers, social networks, adult video websites, and whistleblower websites, regardless of whether those targeted were trading in First Amendment-protected speech. By cutting off these critical services, financial intermediaries force businesses to adhere to their moral and political standards.

It is not surprising that, faced with the choice of losing access to financial services or banning explicit content, OnlyFans would choose its payment processors over its users. For many businesses, losing access to financial services seriously disrupts operations and may have existential consequences.

As EFF has explained, access to the financial system is a necessary precondition for the operations of nearly every Internet intermediary, including content hosts and platforms. The structure of the electronic payment economy makes these payment systems a natural chokepoint for controlling online content. Indeed, in one case, a federal appeals court analogized shutting down financial services for a business to “killing a person by cutting off his oxygen supply.” In that case, Backpage.com, LLC v. Dart, the Seventh Circuit found that a sheriff had violated the First Amendment by strongly encouraging payment processors to cut off financial services to a classified advertising website.

There has been some movement in Washington to fight financial censorship. Earlier this year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized its Fair Access to Financial Services rule, which would have prevented banks from refusing to serve entire classes of customers they find politically or morally unsavory. But the rule was put on hold with the change of administrations in January.

Content moderation is a complex topic, and EFF has written about the implications of censorship by companies closer to the bottom of the technical stack. But content creators should not lose their financial lifelines based on the whims and moral standards of a few dominant and unaccountable financial institutions.

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Calling women at work 'love', 'hun' or 'babes' is demeaning and 'infantilising' but it's acceptable to use 'mate' or 'lad' for male colleague, judge rules at tribunal

I think a lot depends on context here. In some contexts routine use of "hun", "love" etc is accepted as normal

Calling women at work 'love' or 'hun' is demeaning but it's acceptable to use 'mate' for a male colleague, a judge has ruled at a tribunal involving a funeral firm manager who was sacked for using inappropriate language towards female staff.

Mike Hartley had claimed he was a victim of the Me Too movement when he was fired from Blackpool-based funeral firm D Hollowell & Sons Limited in January of this year.

A Manchester tribunal heard how he regularly called women 'sweet', 'love', 'chick' and 'honey', which he argued was the same as calling male counterparts 'mate' or 'lad'.

However the tribunal found it was inappropriate to compare the two, as the way he addressed men did not undermine them in the way his names for women did.

'Calling someone "mate" or "lad" is not a "pet" name in our opinion, it is a nickname,' Employment Judge Pauline Feeney said.

'They are not demeaning... however, chick, babes, bobs, honey, hun and sweetie are all demeaning and infantilising ways of referring to women.'

The final straw came when he called a colleague 'Rachie boobies' after making a comment about looking up her skirt, leading her to file a sexual harassment complaint which led to his dismissal.

The hearing heard how Mr Hartley began working as a driver and bearer for D Hollowell & Sons Limited in 2017 where he was promoted to client liaison and HR manager the following year.

In 2019, colleague Rachel Anderton complained about him making 'insulting' and 'very inappropriate' comments.

The panel heard Mr Hartley requested to add her on Facebook 'immediately' after meeting her, asked her what her 'vital statistics' were when enquiring about uniform size and called her pet names such as 'honey', 'babe' and 'chick' numerous times.

The panel, held remotely, heard this 'shocked' and 'upset' her.

Mr Hartley then brought his claims of sex discrimination and unfair dismissal to the employment tribunal. He said the MeToo movement had influenced the decision to find him guilty.

The panel found he had been unfairly dismissed as the investigation into his behaviour was not carried out properly.

However, it found that the company was right to fire him anyway, and refused to award him compensation.

It rejected his claim that he had been sexually discriminated against.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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