Sweden rules out sweeping changes to free speech law amid Quran burnings

Sweden’s government has no plans to make sweeping changes to freedom of speech laws but repeated it would look into measures that would allow police to stop the burning of holy books in public if there was a clear threat to national security.

“We stand up for the Swedish freedom of speech,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a news conference on Tuesday.

But he urged people to use the freedom of speech responsibly and respectfully. “In a free country like Sweden, you have a great deal of freedom. But with that great degree of freedom comes a great degree of responsibility,” Kristersson said.

“Everything that is legal is not appropriate. It can be awful but still lawful. We try to promote a respectful tone between countries and peoples.”

He also said the government would temporarily ramp up internal security and border controls, giving police wider authority to stop and search people.

Sweden and Denmark have seen a string of protests in recent weeks in which copies of the Quran were burned, or otherwise damaged, prompting outrage in Muslim countries and demands that the Nordic governments put a stop to the incidents of burning.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/1/sweden-rules-out-sweeping-changes-to-free-speech-law-amid-quran-burnings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DOD Backpedals on Gender-Neutral Pronouns. Gen. Milley’s Citation Won’t Use ‘Themself.’

A Department of Defense policy incorporating “gender-neutral” language into award citations will be amended to clarify that it does not ban using “himself” or “herself,” a defense official told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Tuesday.

The DCNF previously reported that the end-of-tour award for Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would use “gender-specific” pronouns, despite a Defense Department Aug. 7 policy update incorporating the gender-neutral “themself” into opening sentences for award citations.

The Pentagon will now update the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards with a “clarifying comment” to ensure joint award citations can use gendered pronouns, the official said.

“The change in the DoD Manual was not intended to restrict use of the citation pronouns. However, in order to avoid confusion in the future, we are adding a clarifying comment that ‘themselves’ can be replaced with ‘himself’ or ‘herself’ as appropriate,” the Pentagon official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The Department will ensure this nuance is reflected in the DoD [manual],” the official said, but did not respond to a question about a timeline for the update.

The official referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to Executive Order 14085, issued by President Joe Biden in October, which updated the language on several prior orders that established the various awards covered in the Defense Department’s joint awards policy.

Since most of those orders described prospective award recipients as “he,” Executive Order 14085 required the wording to include gender-neutral terms because many award descriptions were written prior to women’s integration into the armed forces, the officials said.

However, that executive order also replaced several instances in orders where “himself or herself” was used with “themselves.”

Changes in the joint awards manual “were intended to reflect” that order.

Last Friday, however, when asked about the update, a defense spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the manual’s Aug. 7 update “incorporates gender-neutral language in joint award citations.” Citations are composed individually for each award recipient and included in the full recommendation package, the manual shows.

“The Department consistently updates/changes policy issuances in order to remain in compliance with law, regulations and other policies. Should this issuance require additional updates from the August 7, 2023, change, the Department will follow the same process to update or change the issuance as required,” the spokesperson added.

Milley’s award citation, however, includes pronouns appropriate to his gender and would be processed for a final sign-off using that language, a spokesperson for the chairman told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Sept. 5.

“General Milley’s award recommendation includes gender-specific pronouns. The award recommendation will be processed for approval containing gender-specific language,” Col. Dave Butler, a spokesperson for Milley, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As of Tuesday, Milley’s award certificate has been approved, but not presented, Butler confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Both the award citation and the certificate use male pronouns.

“Themself” is a “non-standard” pronoun “now used chiefly in place of ‘himself or herself’ as a gender-neutral reflexive form of ‘they’ when the reference is to a single person,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/13/pentagon-clarifies-award-citations-can-use-gender-specific-pronouns-himself-herself-instead-of-themselves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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‘Muzzling Speech’: Federal Appeals Court Shoots Down California Gun Ad Law

A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled against a California law banning certain gun advertisements.

The California law prohibits firearm advertisements that could be construed as “designed, intended or reasonably appears attractive to minors.” But since minors can’t purchase firearms, and California already takes steps to prevent youth gun violence, the laws serves the purpose of banning “truthful” gun advertisements in a sweeping and “extensive” manner, according to the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“There is no evidence in the record that a minor in California has ever unlawfully bought a gun, let alone because of an ad,” 9th Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee wrote in the decision. “Nor has the state produced any evidence that truthful ads about lawful uses of guns … encourage illegal or violent gun use among minors.

“California’s law is also more extensive than necessary, as it sweeps in truthful ads about lawful use of firearms for adults and minors alike. For instance, an advertisement directed at adults featuring a camouflage skin on a firearm might be illegal because minors may be attracted to it,” Lee wrote.

Lee’s opinion was shared by fellow 9th Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who noted that the legislation is part of an effort by California to shape views on guns. VanDyke specifically went after the California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, accusing them of targeting speech they disagree with.

“California wants to legislate views about firearms,” VanDyke wrote. “California has thus singled out a particular message it does not like and prohibited its proliferation. Its intent to stamp out this speech is evident from the record. And it crafted a targeted legislative scheme to get the job done.”

“The First Amendment demands more than good intentions and wishful thinking to warrant the government’s muzzling of speech,” Lee wrote.

Newsom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/13/muzzling-speech-federal-appeals-court-shoots-down-california-gun-ad-law

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Australia: Many censored social media posts did not contain Covid-19 misinformation

Many of 4000 social media posts secretly censored by government during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic contained ­factual information and reasonable arguments rather than ­misinformation, new documents reveal.

Digital posts released after Freedom of Information applications show the censored information shared facts such as the ineffectiveness of vaccines in preventing Covid-19 infection and transmission or argued against measures such as mask mandates and lockdowns.

For instance, the then Coalition government sought the removal of an Instagram post in April 2021 that claimed “Covid-19 vaccine does not prevent Covid-19 infection or Covid-19 transmission”.

That statement clearly was accurate yet the official intervention via the Home Affairs Department claimed it breached Instagram’s community guidelines because it was “potentially harmful information” that was “explicitly prohibited” by the platform.

A large proportion of posts the government targeted for removal by the digital platforms promoted wild conspiracy theories and misinformation but many others ­simply questioned the effectiveness of lockdowns and masks, shared information now accepted as accurate, and urged people to protest against pandemic ­measures.

An April 2021 tweet was challenged because it claimed “Covid-19 was released or escaped from Wuhan laboratory in China and that it was funded by the US government”.

The Home Affairs Department claimed this was “explicitly prohibited” under Twitter’s rules because it might “invoke a deliberate conspiracy by malicious and/or powerful forces”, yet American intelligence agencies have found the most likely source of the virus was the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it has been revealed that some work at the laboratory was funded by the US.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/many-censored-social-media-posts-did-not-contain-covid19-misinformation/news-story/c47a8217ffada2cf576475aef3c12c63

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The dystopian rise of videogame censorship

Online censorship is now coming for gamers. Videogame publisher Activision has announced that it will introduce an invasive new system of online censorship to its hugely popular Call of Duty franchise.

In a blog post last month, Activision set out the details of its new partnership with the artificial-intelligence company, Modulate. Their aim is to deliver ‘real-time voice chat moderation, at-scale’ in online gaming matches. Apparently, this is needed to stamp out the allegedly rampant menace of ‘toxic’ behaviour among gamers.

Of course, online gaming is not all sweetness and light. Call of Duty titles allow gamers to shoot and kill each other in online battlefields. Much of its success can be attributed to its online matchmaking system, which also allows players to easily communicate with each other, both within and between matches. And yes, part of the fun of this is that gamers often insult and trash talk each other. While it is true that some players can be vile and bigoted at times, this kind of behaviour is normally met with insults in kind. The worst verbal bruisings tend to be reserved for those eejits who deserve them.

In an attempt to get rid of the most abusive players, Activision is taking some incredibly draconian steps that will limit the free speech of all Call of Duty fans. Modulate’s pro-active voice-moderation tool – ToxMod – will scan and supposedly identify an increasingly broad, and endlessly vague, spectrum of ‘toxic speech’. So-called hate speech, discriminatory language, and harassment are all listed as forbidden, for instance. It will not only report what words players’ use to Activision, but also the tone and intent behind their words.

The tool is set to go online next month. For now, the AI itself will not have the power to ban players from Call of Duty games. Those decisions will still be taken by human moderators. But a system that makes censorship more ‘efficient’, by flagging up supposedly toxic speech in real time, is still a dystopian prospect.

Attempts to curb ‘toxicity’ in gaming are nothing new. Players have long been able to manually report abuse from other players to moderators. But there has been a noticeable escalation of censorship over the past decade or so. Earlier this year, Ubisoft publishing, best known for the Far Cry franchise, announced a partnership with Northumbria Police in the UK that would unite specialist police officers with moderators to tackle ‘toxic’ gaming culture. And in 2021, Intel was widely ridiculed when it introduced Bleep, a software that allows gamers to filter out so-called hate speech, according to their propensity to be offended. Bleep features a sliding scale that lets players choose how many categories of ‘toxic’ speech they’re open to hearing, including ‘none’, ‘some’, ‘most’ or ‘all’.

Activision’s new AI censorship tool is on an altogether larger scale than these initiatives. Millions of Call of Duty players will soon have their speech monitored when the system goes online. This mass surveillance – and mass censorship – is bound to rob gaming of the spontaneity and escapism that makes it worthwhile.

Gamers need to stand up to this attack on their freedoms.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/13/the-dystopian-rise-of-videogame-censorship/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Who killed free speech at Harvard?

Oliver Rhodes

Harvard, consistently ranked as one of the world’s best universities, has just been rated the worst for free speech in the United States. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), which compiled the rankings, described the state of free speech at Harvard as ‘abysmal’.

This news is surprising, since in April over fifty Harvard academics formed a Council on Academic Freedom dedicated, in its words, ‘to promoting free enquiry, intellectual diversity and civil discourse’ on campus. The Council’s formation marked a milestone in official recognition of the problem of free speech, mainly for conservative professors. The psychologist Steven Pinker and Lawrence H. Summers, former advisor to President Clinton, are both members. So why does Harvard’s reputation continue to decline?

Having just finished a year at Harvard, I would say there’s a fairly simple explanation. It is misleading to speak of a free speech problem when Harvard doesn’t really need free speech in the first place. The purpose of America’s elite universities, for decades, has been to serve as hitching posts for the elite. Most people are there to climb the ladder and get a well-paid job. Once you understand this, you can see why a university which professes to champion enquiry, tolerance and diversity ends up doing the exact opposite.

The purpose of America’s elite universities, for decades, has been to serve as hitching posts for the elite

For starters, Harvard’s student body remains stubbornly homogeneous. Ten per cent of graduating seniors identify as conservative, versus 70 per cent liberal. Diversity of race and gender have improved – but these are relatively easy to achieve when affirmative action privileges wealthy black students, and girls outperform boys at high school.

Diversity of class, though, is harder to achieve. One in four students come from America’s top 10 per cent richest households, about as many as come from America’s bottom 50 per cent.

Put another way, Harvard’s student body is not only elite, but elitist. A few right-wing provocateurs at the Republican Club notwithstanding, the scope for genuine disagreement on political and moral issues is narrow. There is no need for ‘free speech’ when most people on campus share a basic worldview.

If Harvard’s faculty had the authority to force their students to think differently on contentious issues, things might be different. But the institution would prefer to keep admissions rates and satisfaction levels high than impose anything so threatening as pedagogy on its students.

A class I took last Autumn, in music composition, ended in bitterness when one student charged our professor with, among other crimes, describing Nina Simone as ‘angry’ (he was showing us her song, Revolution). What surprised me was our poor professor’s resignation: to the petulant and untrue suggestion that he was racist; to the mutiny of his own teaching assistant, who encouraged us to make a formal complaint if we felt sufficiently distressed; and to the remarks that would inevitably be made about him on the Harvard-wide student survey once class was over.

Students are expected to direct not only what they are taught, and how, but how they are rewarded for it too. Grade inflation is a universal problem, but the ‘Harvard A’ is an inside joke, given how many students seem to get one. Those in charge can do little about it: students simply avoid the classes that are too difficult, punishing professors in turn.

The truth is that when higher education has eroded, year after year, until it is little more than a theatre for entitled elites – a way-stop before lucrative careers in finance, consulting and medicine – there really is no need to defend something so antiquated as ideological diversity. Upstanding faculty members can preach veritas, Harvard’s motto, all they like. But the truth is, Harvard doesn’t really need free speech

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/harvard-doesnt-need-free-speech/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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College Free Speech Rankings

Executive Summary

For the fourth year in a row, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit organization committed to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought, and College Pulse surveyed college undergraduates about their perceptions and experiences regarding free speech on their campuses.

This year’s survey includes 55,102 student respondents from 254 colleges and universities.[1] Students who were enrolled in four-year degree programs were surveyed via the College Pulse mobile app and web portal from January 13 to June 30, 2023.

The College Free Speech Rankings are available online and are presented in an interactive dashboard (rankings.thefire.org) that allows for easy comparison between institutions.

Key findings:

Michigan Technological University is the top-ranked school in the 2024 College Free Speech Rankings. Auburn University, the University of New Hampshire, Oregon State University, and Florida State University round out the top five.

Harvard University obtained the lowest score possible, 0.00, and is the only school with an “Abysmal” speech climate rating. The University of Pennsylvania, the University of South Carolina, Georgetown University, and Fordham University also ranked in the bottom five.

The key factors differentiating high-performing schools (the top five) from poorly performing ones (the bottom five) are scores on the components of “Tolerance Difference” and “Disruptive Conduct.” Students from schools in the bottom five were more biased toward allowing controversial liberal speakers on campus over conservative ones and were more accepting of students using disruptive and violent forms of protest to stop a campus speech.

Deplatforming attempts that occurred at schools ranked in the bottom five had an alarming 81% success rate.

More than half of students (56%) expressed worry about damaging their reputation because of someone misunderstanding what they have said or done, and just over a quarter of students (26%) reported that they feel pressure to avoid discussing controversial topics in their classes. Twenty percent reported that they often self-censor.

When provided with a definition of self-censorship, at least a quarter of students said they self-censor “fairly often” or “very often” during conversations with other students, with professors, and during classroom discussions, respectively (25%, 27%, and 28%, respectively). A quarter of students also said that they are more likely to self-censor on campus now — at the time they were surveyed — than they were when they first started college.

Almost half of the students surveyed (49%) said that abortion is a difficult topic to have an open and honest conversation about on campus. A notable portion of students also identified gun control, racial inequality, and transgender rights, respectively, as topics difficult to discuss (43%, 42%, and 42%, respectively).

Student opposition to allowing controversial conservative speakers on campus ranged from 57% to 72%, depending on the speaker. In contrast, student opposition to controversial liberal speakers ranged from 29% to 43%, depending on the speaker.

More than 2 in 5 students (45%) said that students blocking other students from attending a speech is acceptable to some degree, up from 37% last year. And more than a quarter of students (27%) said that using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable to some degree, up from 20% last year.

More than 1 in 5 students (21%) reported that their college administration’s stance on free speech on campus is not clear, and more than a quarter of students (27%) reported that it is unlikely their college administration would defend a speaker’s right to express his or her views if a controversy occurred on campus.

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2024-college-free-speech-rankings

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Censorship started under previous Australian Centre/Right government

A lot of perfectly warranted criticism has been aimed at Anthony Albanese and the Labor Party over their proposed Misinformation and Disinformation bill which, if passed, presents the greatest risk to civil liberty this country has ever seen.

There is nothing more dangerous than a busy-body, virtue-seeking entity channelling the Greater Good by imposing its worldview on public speech. The new laws would curtail the speech of individuals and publications with more ruthlessness than during the brief period of wartime censorship.

Australia is not at war. Our speech is being restricted to protect flimsy political ideas and ruthless corporate interest – and everyone knows it.

While very few people were surprised by a socialist-leaning Labor leadership drooling over such power, we must remember that this nation is being nudged toward dictatorial oversight because of laws first tabled during Scott Morrison’s shameful Liberal Leadership.

Scared by public dissent during Covid and tied up in gargantuan contracts with vaccine manufacturers that drained an already destitute public purse, political leaders hemmed themselves into a narrative that required extreme censorial measures. To pick holes in the government’s pandemic response was to threaten public trust in health authorities. Instead of simply making better decisions, the public were increasingly silenced.

In particular, the father of censorship in Australia is not Albanese, but the former Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts – Paul Fletcher.

In a media release dated March 21, 2022, Paul Fletcher’s office proudly announced ‘New Disinformation Laws’.

‘The Morrison government will introduce legislation this year to combat harmful disinformation and misinformation online.’

Harmful to whom? And what sort of information might have prompted this bill?

‘The legislation will provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with new regulatory powers to hold big tech companies to account for harmful content on their platforms.’

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the egg and sperm that gave rise to Labor’s current bill. Dig a little deeper and it was reported in the Australian Financial Review that the Morrison government chose to combat ‘misinformation’ after a report found ‘four of five Australian adults had seen incorrect information about Covid online’.

No doubt that this ‘incorrect’ information contained within the report is now deemed to be ‘correct’ – but don’t hold your breath for a government correction or updated report.

As many have said, the biggest creators of misinformation and disinformation during Covid were governments and their ‘experts’ – second only to the vaccine companies that wilfully ignored public complaints of harmful side effects that led to untold injuries and deaths in otherwise healthy people.

If this is the premise for Fletcher’s campaign against free speech, it is based on little more than a misguided whim.

‘ACMA’s report highlights that disinformation and misinformation are significant and ongoing issues,’ said Fletcher.

Why is it any of ACMA’s business what people say to each other in a public forum? That is the question Fletcher should have been asking.

He continued:

‘Digital platforms must take responsibility for what is on their sites and take action when harmful or misleading content appears. This is our government’s clear expectation, and just as we have backed that expectation with action in recently passing the new Online Safety Act, we are taking action when it comes to disinformation and misinformation.’

Which is a statement rife with disinformation or misinformation. Take your pick. We could simply say that Fletcher is wrong, morally and practically.

Even if it were possible to police the speech of 25.69 million Australians in real-time, social media platforms are just that – platforms – and they are governed by America’s Section 230 Immunity which forbids them from acting as publishers on pain of being reclassified. Their ‘editorial’ limit extends to the removal of illegal content and these companies are already on shaky legal ground with their terms of service and community guidelines which many say contradict Section 230. That is a battle for America, but if social media platforms start making ‘truth’ judgements on online content, they will be overtly in violation of the rules that govern their existence.

And let’s be real. This is like the government asking the bloke behind the bar to come around and eavesdrop on everyone’s conversation and kick them out of the pub if they say something the government doesn’t like.

‘Oh, but they are misinforming their friends!’

‘Bugger off, mate!’ Would be the obvious reply to such an unwanted intrusion by government.

The leaked Twitter Files have given us a glimpse into the thousands of requests government and law enforcement agencies sent to one company and the information they chose to remove was not harmful, as claimed, but rather politically and commercially awkward.

While the Morrison government said that his move toward censorship was part of a longer battle to ‘halt the spread of misleading information’, it appears to have been created as a direct response to Covid.

If that is the case, why hasn’t Fletcher been asked to examine what happened with online information during Covid? Much of what the government called conspiracy turned out to be the truth. Masks do not work. Vaccines do not stop infection or transmission. Vaccines can cause heart injuries and death. Lockdowns do not work and cause major harms. The bat virus came out of China. Any or all of these things were deemed harmful when the original Liberal version of this bill was drafted. One can only imagine how such laws will be misused to favour the trillion-dollar climate change industry.

Anyone looking at this situation would see the formation of a protection racket that uses censorship to protect political and corporate interests at the expense of truth.

ACMA may want to be the arbiter of truth online but they have never shown themselves to be a worthy digital god.

Where are their apologies and corrections for the misinformation and disinformation endorsed as ‘true’ by government? Where are ACMA’s criticisms of government propaganda? A regulator that begins life denying its mistakes is not going to be a benign beacon of truth.

Fletcher has accidentally described the establishment of a Ministry of ‘Truth’ perfectly.

‘A Misinformation and Disinformation Action Group will be established, bringing together key stakeholders across government and the private sector to collaborate and share information on emerging issues and best practice responses.’

It was correct for the Shadow Communications Minister David Coleman to react with horror to Labor’s new censorial bill but – come on – when is the Liberal Party going to come clean about its previous actions?

Why hasn’t Paul Fletcher’s work in the field of Orwellian censorship been loudly denounced by Leader Peter Dutton? The bill has not been passed yet but Linda Burney is already accusing Dutton of spreading misinformation and disinformation over the Voice referendum.

‘We have just heard, in one speech, every bit of disinformation and misinformation and scare campaigns that exist in this debate,’ said Burney.

Which is why the Liberal Party should know better than to gift government the power of censorship. It is always used as a political weapon, which is the very opposite of safe.

How can any conservative voters have confidence in a Liberal Party that spent years drafting censorial policy and cheering on the restriction of speech in a country that used to believe in basic Western values?

‘This is a very bad bill. The government should rip it up. Freedom of speech is fundamental to our democracy, and the Coalition will always fight for it,’ said Coleman.

Yes. Good man.

But the material problem facing voters is that the Coalition didn’t fight for free speech. When they were in power, they proposed bill after bill after bill to limit free speech to protect political reputations and commercial interests.

For this betrayal, there has never been an apology.

We want that apology, Mr Dutton.

More than that, we need the Liberal Party to acknowledge the basic truth that neither government nor ACMA have any right or ability to determine what Australian citizens can say to each other in a public forum.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/paul-fletcher-the-father-of-australian-censorship/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Woke cancel culture threatens some of our greatest works of art

The cultural traditions of Western civilisation have been under consistent attack for some years, none more so than classical music. Previously, the immortality of this music seemed assured and invincible. Now, some of its greatest composers are labelled ‘dead, white males’ and tainted with elitism and colonialism.

Classical or art music is in dangerous, unmapped territory, and not because people are averse to music. On the contrary, it remains part of everyday life, especially pop music, with strong personal appeal, above all to younger people. But pop music is crowding out the classics, including a tradition of art song or German Lieder that reached a high point in the Romantic era of 19th-century Austria and Germany, and was adopted by thousands of composers in many nations. Perfected by Schubert in hundreds of songs with peerless melodies and harmony, art song may not survive unless performers become its defenders and warriors.

Such are the lamentations of Professor Graham Johnson, celebrated British piano accompanist and pedagogue, who recently held six days of Lieder masterclasses at the Sydney Conservatorium. Organised by Jeanell Carrigan, Associate Professor in Collaborative Piano, the course included works by Schubert, Wolf, Schumann and Richard Strauss.

Johnson’s breathtaking analysis, warmth and humour transformed many student performances, culminating in a moving concert reflecting new-found dimensions of feeling and complexity.

Among music lovers, the Lied attracts a minority of enthusiasts, so why conserve this tradition with the drawback of poems in a foreign language? Isn’t it also elitist and over-refined? Elitist perhaps, as it is championed by a small number of devotees. Even so, this multifaceted art reveals much of Western music and civilisation in miniature. As a microcosm of history and social change, the songs touch on themes as diverse as ancient Greece, nature, or exhausted French soldiers returning from Russia during the Napoleonic wars.

Piquant, sensual, entertaining or awesome, a web of melodic fragments binds each poem to the music, depicting an atmospheric landscape far greater than the sum of the two. In the Lied, a sophisticated quartet of poet, composer, singer and accompanist represents some of the most inventive music in the Western canon.

Emotional gradations from delicate to passionate can be swift, and the slightest nuance of tempo or volume may signify shifts in meaning. The communication to listeners is intimate, often expressing universal pathos. A modulation can pull at the heartstrings and a single note or dissonance echo danger in the storyline.

Without the props of opera and the demands of a conductor, both singer and accompanist experience vast freedom of interpretation within an enmeshed musical relationship.

Extensive knowledge is not required to enjoy the songs, only some initial exposure and an English translation of the text. With greater familiarity, the vignettes release their secrets, encouraging repeated pilgrimage and contemplation. But today, the Lied, and classical music generally, are being cancelled by politicisation.

Critical Theory is dividing society into oppressors and victims based on race, gender, colonialism, etc. dressed up self-righteously as social justice. An offshoot of postmodernism and Marxism that marched from the universities to mainstream society, this movement threatens Western culture and civilisation with its agenda of subversion and autocratic control.

To eradicate opposition and advance its revolutionary aims, critical theory’s activist ‘woke’ arm wields ‘cancel culture’, and in relation to music, silences ‘problematic’ composers deemed morally reprehensible.

In line with the ideology, academics at Oxford University’s music department have questioned whether their mostly white faculty is prejudiced in favour of white musicians and ‘white musics’, and suggested African, global and popular music should gain preference over composers such as Schubert. Some professors also believe the method of grading itself can be seen as a ‘colonialist system of oppression’.

Viewed through the lens of colonisation and the slave trade, Handel and Mozart are condemned as privileged white males who oppressed a victimised minority. Research has revealed that Handel invested in the slave trade. Mozart is implicated by association because his father, Leopold, turned a blind eye to the wealth of patrons whose fortunes sprang from plantations in Jamaica. Beethoven’s aristocratic sponsors may have escaped the infamy of slavery, but they were entitled, and his titanic 5th Symphony, dedicated to noble patrons, is ‘a reminder of classical music’s history of exclusion and elitism’.

Although Schubert had few benefactors, he is typecast with other denigrated European composers. Yet this Midas of the song, says Johnson, is a man for modern times – a composer who could express the gamut of emotions but especially identify with the weak and marginalised. Despite suffering despair and alienation from then-incurable syphilis, Schubert remains a bearer of tenderness and gentleness that receptive listeners can pass on.

The Lieder of Schubert and other composers demand a reach for excellence, also sought by faculty at conservatories steeped in merit, lineage and traditions. These objective standards are not consistent with subjective post-modern criteria often accepted in schools and the wider society.

If music education in schools continues to decline due to ideology, lowered standards and underfunding, the Lied could become an endangered species on the road to extinction. With such prospects, an event like Graham Johnson’s masterclasses offers a sorely needed corrective.

One of the daunting aspects of Lieder is the language. In this regard, there is an intriguing Australian connection in Sir Robert Randolph Garren, a barrister who was involved with drafting the constitution of Australia and became the first-appointed solicitor-general. A noted writer and poet, Garren translated many of Schubert’s songs into English. Rediscovery of his fine translations could stimulate interest in the genre’s greatest composer and improve accessibility for English-speaking audiences.

In any case, the East has grasped the baton of Western classical music, including Lieder. Children of Asian immigrant families already dominate Western conservatories and classical music is well-established in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. With enormous interest in China, many budding musicians study in the West and continue Western traditions of performance and teaching back home. The pivot to the East could challenge critical theory’s corrosive path in classical music including Lieder. A priceless cache of songs and singular representatives of Western civilisation is at stake.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/silencing-the-song

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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CUNY professors’ free-speech case could be next blow to Big Labor

Union officials often bemoan how so-called “dark money” in politics is supposedly being used to “rig the system” against workers.

Ignored, of course, is how Big Labor has managed to rig the system in its favor by buying undue political influence with money seized from workers under threat of termination if they refuse to pay.

This power to extort rank-and-file workers to pay up or be fired still exists for private sector workers not covered by a state Right-to-Work law, which guarantees you can’t be forced into a union to keep your job.

But a landmark US Supreme Court ruling five years ago ended union officials’ ability to dragoon millions of government workers into funding union politics.

In 2018’s Janus v. AFSCME, the justices ruled that the First Amendment protects public employees from being forced to subsidize government-union speech.

It does so because government unions’ conduct is inherently political — the very purpose of a public-sector union is to “bargain” over how the government operates.

Janus’ impact has been massive. The court declared unconstitutional a legal regime union officials used to force workers to subsidize tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of union political action over the years.

Argued by the National Right to Work Foundation’s attorneys, Janus immediately freed some 500,000 nonmember unionized government employees who previously had to pay union fees as a job condition.

Yet the battle to fully enforce workers’ Janus rights continues to this day.

In over 50 follow-up cases, Foundation legal aid has directly helped enforce the rights of another 70,000 public employees.

Since the Janus ruling, recent research suggests that in all some 1.2 million government employees have resigned from a union or refused union membership — roughly equivalent to one in five American public-sector workers.

The exodus has meant an estimated $733 million loss in annual union revenue.

That’s a big blow to union bosses. Yet even if Janus is fully enforced (and the regular filing of new cases to protect public employees’ First Amendment Janus rights suggests it isn’t thus far), that doesn’t mean an end to government union bosses’ undue political influence.

In the vast majority of US states, even post-Janus, laws still empower union officials to force their one-size-fits-all “representation” on all workers in a public sector workplace, even those that oppose the union or voted against its presence.

 This “monopoly bargaining” power gives union leaders control over the contracts, salary, benefits, and work rules of countless workers who openly oppose them.

It also means elected officials answerable to voters are forced to “negotiate” with union bosses over public policy, driving up costs to taxpayers while undermining efficiency and accountability.

Janus went a long way toward reducing union bosses’ stranglehold over public workers’ rights and their inordinate influence over government.

But it’s clear that, to fully protect government workers’ First Amendment rights, union officials must not be able to force public workers under their monopoly “representation.”

Fortunately, there’s an excellent vehicle courts can use to establish such a protection: Goldstein v. Professional Staff Congress (PSC), now before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

In Goldstein, six City University of New York professors seek to invalidate a New York state law that forces the “representation” of the PSC union on them.

The profs adamantly oppose being “represented” by radical PSC officials who have personally attacked them and issued statements the Jewish professors find anti-Semitic.

They ask the court to strike down the forced representation scheme as a violation of the professors’ freedom of association under the First Amendment.

Public-sector unions shouldn’t be able to leverage their monopoly bargaining powers over public workers to further their agendas in government and politics, nor should they be able to force workers to pay for the exercise of that power.

Five years ago, Janus declared the latter unconstitutional.

Hopefully, five years from now, it will be well-established that public workers also have the First Amendment freedom to not be subjected to union “representation” they oppose.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/03/cuny-professors-free-speech-case-could-be-next-blow-to-big-labor/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SCOTUS' Ruling in Gay Wedding Website Case Was a Defeat for Compelled Speech

The government may not compel someone to "create speech she does not believe," the Supreme Court ruled in June. In a 6–3 opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the Court sided with a graphic designer, Lorie Smith, who wanted to expand into the wedding website business without being forced by Colorado law to create products celebrating same-sex marriages.

Back in 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit found that the planned websites would each constitute "an original, customized creation," designed by Smith with a goal of celebrating the couple's "unique love story." As such, it said, they "qualify as 'pure speech' protected by the First Amendment." The appeals court admitted that Smith was willing to provide her services to anyone as long as the substance of the project did not contradict her values. It also recognized that "Colorado's 'very purpose' in seeking to apply its law to Ms. Smith" was to stamp out dissenting ideas about marriage.

Despite all of that, the 10th Circuit held that the state government was within its authority to compel her to create such websites. Lamenting "an unfortunate tendency by some to defend First Amendment values only when they find the speaker's message sympathetic," Gorsuch et al. concluded otherwise.

The ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is neither as narrow nor as broad as it (theoretically) could have been. The Court did not do away with public accommodations laws or allow businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of characteristics such as skin color or national origin. But it did note that "public accommodations statutes can sweep too broadly when deployed to compel speech."

The high court also did not establish a right for any and every business owner to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings—only those whose services involve expressive activity. Whether a particular service (say, cake baking) is expressive will have to be litigated case by case.

At the same time, the majority decided Smith's case as a matter of free expression rather than religious liberty. It did not say the faith-based nature of Smith's beliefs about marriage entitled her to an exemption. Secular people with moral or factual objections to expressing a particular message presumably would receive the same protections as Christians or Muslims with religious objections—as they should.

"The opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties," Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. "Abiding the Constitution's commitment to the freedom of speech means all of us will encounter ideas we consider….'misguided, or even hurtful'….But tolerance, not coercion, is our Nation's answer."

https://reason.com/2023/09/05/scotus-rejects-compelled-speech/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Influencer is attacked as 'ableist' for telling fans she's 'praying for a healthy baby'

This is just the old Leftist "all men are equal" gospel pushed to an extreme, as it usually is

An expectant mom has sparked fury and claims of ‘ableism’ on TikTok by mentioning her hope for a healthy baby.

Influencer Kim Perry updated her 200,000 followers with news of her pregnancy and a dance showing off her growing baby bump. The mother of three girls captioned it: ‘Ignoring everyone who says “it better be a boy this time” and just praying for a healthy baby.’

But the innocuous comment - 'praying for a healthy baby' - infuriated some who accused her of insulting children with disabilities and suggesting they are less worthy of love.

‘If it’s not “healthy” then your prayers won’t be answered?’ demanded a user by the name of @lessambition.  ‘How is ableism different from being sex-selective?’

Perry deleted the video but not before it caught the attention of Texas comedian Kevin Fredericks, better known as Kev On Stage, who took issue with the backlash in a video now seen more than one million times.

‘There is nothing you can say on the internet that someone can’t make negative,’ he sighed. ‘And there’s also nothing you can say on the internet that someone can’t then put words in your mouth and say something you did not say.

‘She did not say that unhealthy kids aren’t worthy of love, all she said was “I’m praying for a healthy baby”.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12479831/Comedian-Kevin-Fredericks-defends-TikTok-mom-Kim-Perry-influencer-attacked-ableist-telling-fans-shes-praying-healthy-baby.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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New Department of Defense Rule Neuters the Brave Men and Women Who Serve in the Armed Forces

Change 5 to the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards took effect on Aug. 7, 2023, and hardly anyone noticed.

That is until last week, when the Office of the Secretary of Defense returned the draft citation for the end-of-tour award for none other than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, four-star Army Gen. Mark Milley.

Because of Change 5, Milley’s citation must use the pronoun “themself” instead of “him.”

Page 49 of the revised manual includes draft language for awards, such as this (emphasis added):

Superior Meritorious Service (e.g., PCS and Retirement awards): (Rank) First M. Last, Jr., United States (Military Service), distinguished themself by superior meritorious service in a position of significant responsibility as (position and duty assignment), from (month year) to (month year).

The revised rules, found in Department of Defense Manual 1348.33, Volume 4, will apply to the most prestigious joint awards given by the Department of Defense, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Joint Service Achievement Medal, and the Joint Meritorious Unit Award.

Aside from the fact that the use of the pronoun “themself” is grammatically incorrect and just plain stupid sounding, it is insulting to every service man and service women in the armed forces.

There are two sexes: male and female. When a member of the U.S. armed forces earns a military decoration or award, he or she deserves to be recognized in that member’s official citation by the pronoun “he” or “she,” not some woke, grammatically incorrect pronoun demanded by elitist Biden administration apparatchiks.

Gender-neutral language used in cases where the actual, biological gender of the person is clearly known reduces that person to an androgenous non-entity, devoid—stripped, rather—of a profoundly fundamental characteristic central to who that person is as an individual. It effectively converts a distinguished service member into a sexless drone among a greater collective of genderless “servicepersons.”

Through the use of a mere four words—“incorporates gender neutral language”—Change 5 imposes by fiat a radical redefining of what it means to be a man or a woman and to be recognized as such. It is the latest manifestation of a political agenda that seeks to homogenize humanity by stripping it of a defining characteristic.

In essence, this is what the alphabet soup of gender identities and sexual orientations really amounts to: a watering down or dilution of identity to the point where the multitude of identities effectively means there is no defining identity—no actual “person” who can be known as a man or a woman, the essence of biological identity among humans.

George Orwell would have included such a phrase—“gender neutral language”—in his dictionary of Newspeak terms had his world in 1949 been so gender-confused and immersed in the identity-politics of the Progressive Left.

But this is a favorite tactic of those in power, to leverage the power of the executive branch to impose an administration’s writ through directives, executive orders, and even administration instructions.

In this single case, four words dictate to the more than 2 million Americans proudly and honorably serving in uniform that their service to country—in any state, territory, or overseas assignment—in any joint capacity can only be recognized with the neutering word “themself.”

Since the Biden administration imposed this diktat at the Joint-level, you can be sure this will trickle down into the service-level awards made by the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Space Force in fairly short order.

Big Brother would be so pleased.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/01/new-department-defense-rule-requires-highest-military-awards-use-gender-neutral-pronouns

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Erica Mena will ‘not appear’ on next season of ‘Love & Hip Hop’ after calling co-star a monkey

I don't think there is much wrong with monkeys. I rather like them

Erica Mena will “not appear” on the next season of “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” after she called her co-star Spice a “monkey” during a heated argument.

“The ‘Love & Hip Hop’ franchise has never shied away from hard conversations in our community,” the VH1 series wrote in an Instagram statement Saturday. “Working hand-in-hand with our partners, viewers will see the impact of Erica Mena’s remarks play out in the final three episodes of the season.

“Effective immediately, she will not appear in the next season of ‘Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,'” the announcement concluded.

Page Six has reached out to Mena’s reps and the network for comment but did not immediately hear back.

The video vixen got into a heated confrontation with her co-star Spice on Tuesday’s episode. The musician told Mena that her oldest son “hates” her.

In response, the actress flipped the table and yelled, “You monkey, you f–king blue monkey!”

Fans called for Mean to be fired from the show over the racial slur.

https://pagesix.com/2023/09/02/erica-mena-fired-from-love-amp-hip-hop-after-calling-co-star-monkey/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Censoring Conservative Pronouns

We have endured many instances of censorship when it comes to conservative speech. The Left has systematically labeled virtually every position that conservatives hold as either “bigoted” or “racist.” Leftists also can enforce their tyranny of thought because they dominate the institutions — even institutions like a 4-H equestrian competition hosted by Washington State University.

4-H is the largest youth development organization in the U.S., and it is by no means a right-wing organization. This is immediately obvious when reading about its focus on “ensuring access and equity for all” and “creating safe, diverse and inclusive environments.”

The four Hs are Head, Heart, Hands, and Health, and when applied to horses, kids display specific horsemanship skills including grooming. Which leads to the meat of the controversy. A team of young teen girls (ages 15) all were participating in a 4-H groom squad competition. When they arrived, they discovered that their team could earn extra points if they had team shirts. They bought team shirts at a booth at the fair where the competition was taking place, donned them, and began getting ready for the competition. The shirts were black T-shirts with the slogan “My Pronouns Nor/mal.”

Not long after getting ready, the teens were approached by 4-H official Brian Brandt, who began chastising them about their choice of team shirt.

Brandt informed the girls that their shirts were offensive and targeted a minority community. He insisted that these shirts were against the state laws on discrimination and harassment. His final argument was that the shirts could make someone with different pronouns feel abnormal. He did all this without their parents being present.

The situation quickly changed as one of the girl’s fathers came over to investigate what was going on. According to a statement made to the 4-H organization by Sydney Smith: “Almost immediately after my dad came over to see what was going on, another parent (not involved with us, or the situation) involved herself in the conversation and started yelling and pointing at me, telling me I had no business wearing that shirt and I needed to take it off. I was scared and felt harassed and discriminated against by both Brian Brandt and the other parent. I felt very unsafe with them and still do. For the rest of the fair, I made sure I was never alone and had one of my friends or parents with me or close by.”

Brandt’s bungling wasn’t done. He also approached one of the mothers, Donna Person Smith, later in the day, displeased that these girls had a photo of their shirts up on Facebook. He told Smith to take down the post. In an interview after the fact, Smith said: “It was not a blanket rule that there are no ‘words’ or ‘pronouns’ on shirts, just that he gets to decide which ‘words’ or ‘pronouns’ are allowed. This is not only unfair, it is a violation of my daughter’s right to free speech and free expression. Brian Brandt specifically targeted these girls because of his personal interpretation and opinion about the shirts — not based on any actual rule violation.”

Other people at the competition publicly complained on social media. Brandt responded to these complaints, insinuating that the girls purposely adorned these shirts to make the event less safe for LGBTQ+ people. Essentially, he placed a target on the back of these teen girls and, as many have found out, the gender cultists are among the most violent and horrible bullies there are.

This blatant censorship of free speech and freedom of expression is just the latest attack on conservative viewpoints. To make a public example of teenage girls and to act like their shirts were acts of violence is ridiculous and frankly deranged. What else is new from the gender ideologues? They don’t argue; they bully. They don’t debate; they make public examples of. These girl flaunted their conservative ideology and must be punished.

Frankly, people who behave this way toward children, putting them directly in the line of fire from the worst people there are, should forfeit their right to be around children. Period.

On the other hand, this tantrum about the shirts isn’t surprising. These teens were at a 4-H event, which seems to be a very left-leaning organization. That event was hosted by Washington State University — hardly the bastion of conservative thinking. It by no means justifies the attacks that the girls and their parents suffered, but considering their location and the organization, it’s not unexpected.

One can only hope these girls and their parents stick to their guns and continue to fight for their rights to free speech and freedom of expression. Lord knows 4-H certainly won’t apologize for putting these girls in danger.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/100100-censoring-conservative-pronouns-2023-08-31

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The trans threat to freedom: Gender ideology relies on censorship to survive

The UK was historically a bastion of free speech. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were once rightly given safe haven in London. Here, they were totally free to publicly articulate their desire to see capitalism violently overthrown – including within the very nation that had taken them in.

Compare and contrast that with today. Now in the UK, it is near impossible to challenge the idea that a man cannot be a woman, and vice versa. Anyone who objects to gender ideology can be cancelled, have their bank account closed, be subject to police harassment or even potentially prosecuted.

Incredibly, the situation could get even worse under a Labour government. The Labour Party – supported by some Conservative MPs such as Theresa May and Alicia Kearns – has long pledged to classify misgendering someone as a ‘hate crime’ and to introduce a blanket ban on ‘trans conversion therapy’. Essentially, this would mean that anyone who refuses to affirm the desire of trans people to transition could be subject to prosecution.

The consequences of this would be staggering. Could it apply to parents and therapists, for example? Would anyone who advises caution before going down a life-changing medical path find themselves with a criminal record? This extraordinary proposal would bring the state right on to the therapist’s couch and into the family living room.

It should come as no surprise that politicians in thrall to the trans movement are proposing authoritarian policies in the name of ‘trans rights’. This is, after all, a fundamentally anti-liberal, regressive ideology. It goes well beyond campaigning for the right of individuals to articulate whatever identity they wish.

Even during those dark days when homosexuality was outlawed in the UK, it was not illegal to present as another gender. Britain, after all, has a long tradition of transvestitism among both men and women. Rather than liberate people from repressive laws, trans ideology seeks to impose a whole range of oppressive obligations upon society at large. It is but one branch on a wider tree of allied ideologies – including critical race theory and extreme environmentalism. The ultimate objective of these movements is to forcibly restructure society and to severely restrict the expression of competing views.

There are two key reasons why political liberals, from whatever points on the ideological spectrum they have emerged, should be deeply concerned about the rise of trans ideology. First is the way in which it further divides society into alleged ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ groups. The aim is to politically mobilise those it has given victim status (regardless of whether or not those individuals wish to be classified in this way). It does this through the promise of various political privileges, such as the legal right to gender self-identification, in the case of the trans movement.

The granting of such a privilege would, of course, have wide-reaching implications. Namely, it would allow biological males claiming to be women into spaces and activities traditionally reserved for females. It also opens the door to other fantastical forms of self-identification that could, in turn, become the basis for legal protection and special benefits. Using the logic of the trans movement, who could argue that I, a white-skinned man, cannot identify as a totally different ethnicity? Or that a middle-aged man couldn’t identify as a teenage girl?

Second, trans ideology is predicated upon the belief that people’s own perception of their gender should take precedence over objective, biological factors. In other words, gender trumps sex. Hence the slogan ‘transwomen are women’. To accept this ‘truth’ of someone having been born into the wrong body, it is demanded that we suspend our powers of judgement. We must not verbally contradict this new, constructed reality.

This movement then accords with the postmodernist view that language is a form of coercive power. It is therefore legitimate to restrict what can be expressed to prevent supposed psychological harm. LGBT charity Stonewall, for example, wants more state intervention to suppress what it judges to be ‘hate speech’. It defines ‘transphobia’ as ‘the fear or dislike of someone based on the fact they are trans, including denying their gender identity or refusing to accept it’. Hence the demand that misgendering (namely, correctly sexing) a trans person should be classified as a ‘hate crime’.

Even discussing the legitimacy of trans ideology is seen as denying the dignity of trans people. Labour MP Nadia Whittome has stated: ‘The very act of debate [on the trans issue]… is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred.’ She is joined by Tory MP and fellow trans-rights authoritarian Alicia Kearns, who announced, somewhat ironically, during a parliamentary debate: ‘This is not something we should have to debate.’

The logic of these politicians’ positions is that the greater limitation placed on our capacity to challenge trans ideology, the more free trans people will be. Free speech is thus, for them, a zero-sum game. Where does this leave the foundational principles underlying liberal democracy?

The trans movement relies on authoritarian tactics to survive. The only way to coerce us into accepting this ideology’s logic is to change the way we think and to control the language we use. Yes, trans people must have the right to express themselves as they see fit, but so must the critics of trans ideology. Anyone who values liberty should be alarmed at what is happening in the name of trans rights.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/28/the-trans-threat-to-freedom/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Latest Jackbooted Big Tech Censorship

Google-owned YouTube recently announced that it is expanding its COVID-specific censorship practices to now include all “medical misinformation.” According to the new guidelines, only medical information that comports with what is currently approved by local health authorities or the World Health Organization will be deemed appropriate to post.

That which runs counter to the accepted narrative will be subject to censorship and removal according to three broadly and ill-defined categorizations of “medical misinformation.” Those categories of supposed “misinformation” are as follows: prevention misinformation, treatment misinformation, and denial misinformation.

YouTube’s new policy implicitly advises self-censorship, as it states: “Don’t post content on YouTube if it contains any of the [above information].”

We’re old enough to remember the compromised history of the WHO during the coronavirus pandemic and the misinformation the UN organization was guilty of pushing — as were the CDC and Dr. Anthony “The Science” Fauci himself. That included misinformation such as that the COVID vaccines prevented infection or the spread of COVID and that the Wuhan lab leak was a quack conspiracy theory. One would have thought this would have caused YouTube to back off its medical information suppression efforts. Of course, that would only be the case if those running YouTube were actually concerned about maintaining a platform where truth can be discovered and error exposed; a platform that believes in free speech.

However, as investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger observed, “YouTube isn’t a social media platform, it’s a propaganda platform.” Exactly.

But Google isn’t the only Big Tech company ramping up content censorship. Meta-owned Facebook is still outsourcing its censorship policing to “neutral” “fact-checking” organizations in an effort to claim Facebook itself is not engaged in any efforts to suppress content. Well, as we’ve noted ad nauseam, these “fact-checking” outfits are anything but neutral; rather, they are almost all leftist organizations that Meta is funding to suppress conservative content on Facebook.

One such “fact-checking” outfit is the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), hired by Meta to the tune of $740,000 a year. RMIT is responsible for blocking and deplatforming a number of Australian journalists — of course, all in the name of preventing “misinformation” or for some other dubious reason.

Elon Musk recently weighed in by calling for transparency: “Facebook is manipulating the public almost everywhere on Earth. That is why they won’t open source their algorithm.”

Speaking of Musk, for his buyout of Twitter, now known as X, the billionaire entrepreneur repeatedly expressed his desire to ensure the social media platform would serve as a beacon for free speech. Unfortunately, it appears that beacon isn’t shining so brightly lately.

Musk recently touted what amounts to a “fairer” censorship. Concerned over advertisement dollars, Musk is apparently seeking to assuage the concerns of advertisers who don’t want to be associated with “problematic” posts, and so he therefore is willing to engage in censorship of certain subjects or terms — it’s just that he will also censor leftists. He announced that the term “cis” would be banned from the platform, as he declared it to be considered a slur. He’s pretty much right about that.

Even so, Musk will compromise with the Left by enforcing its “preferred pronouns” rules in exchange for censoring certain words conservatives may find offensive. But conservatives aren’t asking for censorship of anyone. We care about the fundamental principle of freedom of speech on a public platform.

The fact of the matter is, Big Tech censorship will only get worse, as upholding the narrative matters more than contending for the truth.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/99914-the-latest-jackbooted-big-tech-censorship-2023-08-24

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mike Rowe Doubles Down on Apple’s Speech Suppressors

Patriot Post content is constantly being suppressed by social media platforms, the most recent example being the effort by the Facebook speech suppression commissars to prevent our 750,000 followers on that platform from seeing our content.

Sometimes the adolescent cadre of leftist speech suppressors endeavoring to bury conservative commentary and analysis step into a deeper hole than they anticipated. Such is the unfolding case with Apple’s podcast platform, which is threatening to cancel “The Megyn Kelly Show” because of her defense of women. Apparently, Kelly has been very vocal in her objections to women being forced to compete against males pretending to be females, and then having to shower with them.

Enter our friend, Mike Rowe, who tends to be conservative/libertarian in his views. He posted a video of Kelly daring Apple to deplatform her and an image of himself displaying that video while noting: “If it comes to that, I’d march with her. Would you?”

Like Kelly, Rowe’s social media presence reaches millions of followers. As he sometimes does when he has stepped up to defend what we should ALL defend, in this case free speech, he chooses an example from some emotionally incontinent objector and eviscerates them to highlight the absurdity of their objection.

Rowe notes that “most agreed that the underlying issues — free speech and women’s rights — were worth defending and answered in the affirmative.” However, he posted the following objection from one Jessica Pranger:

“Nope, not for one second would I stand next to this farce of a woman. Mike, your desperate grabs at popularity are embarrassing. Stay in your lane, please. I thank you in advance for not inserting your bullcrap pandering for women in any other scenario that includes women. You don’t belong and you most certainly are not choosing the right woman to be in complete support of. She is a brainwashed, phobic, fear driven, fear mongering blow hard… much like the faction you love pandering to so much. You and your ilk are so off base that I am actually embarrassed for you.”

And we’re off! Here are some excerpts from Mike’s response:


"Obviously, you’re not the only one to dislike Megyn Kelly [or] admonish me for wandering “outside my lane.” The question is, do you care at all about the underlying issues? If not, that’s okay, but if you’re going to share your feelings with 6 million people, why not take a moment to include some actual thoughts? Specifically, some thoughts on the right to speak freely, and the right for women to compete fairly? Those are the issues in question, not your feelings about Megyn or me. Unless of course, your feelings are the only thing you have to share?

You say that Megyn is not the “right” woman to follow, or offer my “complete support” to. I didn’t say that Megyn has my “complete support.” All I said was that I’d stand with her on the underlying issues; just as I would stand with you, if you were muzzled by a big tech company for publicly supporting the rights of women. …

As for your personal comments about Megyn Kelly, I don’t share your view that she is a “farce” of woman, but even if I did, I’d support her right to speak freely, and her daughter’s right to use a locker room free of biological men. Do you? Who knows? You haven’t said. All you’ve argued here, is that I’m pandering to women. You seem to believe that because I’m not a woman, I have no right to hold an opinion on anything related to women. If so, am I also precluded from expressing an opinion on slavery, simply because I’ve never been a slave, or owned a slave? You advise me to “stay in my lane” in much the same way people used to tell women and minorities to “know their place.” That strikes me as a convenient way for people to silence those with whom they disagree, without offering an actual argument.

I get it. The world is tired of celebrities using their platforms to weigh in on the headlines. … Why then, would a celebrity, or a company for that matter, knowingly put their fans and customers in such a position? Why did Bud Light make it so hard for so many of their customers to support them? Why did Target? As I type this, I see that Alice Cooper has been dropped by a cosmetics company for suggesting that children are not in a position to decide for themselves what gender they are. And poor Carlos Santana … he doesn’t know what to do. A few weeks ago, he declared during a concert, “a man is a man, and a woman is woman.” … So, did Carlos Santana wander outside his lane? Did Alice Cooper? Or, did they take a highly principled position on a topic that mattered deeply to them, and exercise their first amendment rights?

I’m worried that we’ve entered into a time when the experts disagree on every serious topic, where journalism has been replaced almost entirely by editorial partisanship, and everyone on both sides of every issue believes the “science has been settled” in whatever way confirms their own beliefs. Climate change, Covid, mask and vaccine mandates, immigration, homelessness, transgender rights, criminal justice, reparations … the certainty is everywhere. Mostly though, I’m worried that people — and corporations — are determined to silence the opposition, rather than make any attempt to persuade, or even put forth a rational argument.

If you were on this page twelve years ago, you know that I was boycotted by a big trade organization called the TRSA. … Basically, the Textile Service and Rental Association was upset with me because I had “wandered outside of my lane,” and participated in a campaign that promoted disposable shop towels. … When I refused to apologize, or distance myself from the people who hired me, the TRSA published a list of everyone I did business with — Discovery, Ford, Wrangler, Caterpillar, Viva, and Kimberly Clarke — and then called for a general boycott of all things related to Mike Rowe. In short, they tried to silence me, and then they tried to destroy me. It scared the hell out of me, and I fought back — on this very page — and they eventually went away. I wonder, though, what would happen today? And to be clear, I’d prefer not to find out. But not if it means forgoing my right to speak freely, or standing by, while women’s fundamental rights are being cast aside, or being told to shut up or else.

To sum up, Jessica, this page is “my lane,” and you are a guest on it. To be sure, you’ve said some rude and unpersuasive things, but I would never ban you or block you for those reasons. On the other hand, it’s worth remembering that this page is not really my property. This page belongs to Facebook, and you and I are both here with their permission. Tell me, if they were to close “my lane” because of this post, would you object? Would you join me in protest? Or would you celebrate my banishment?

That was the question inherent in Megyn Kelly’s video. I’ve answered it as best I can. You should, too.

Love, Mike"

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/100020-mike-rowe-doubles-down-on-apples-speech-suppressors-2023-08-28

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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British Health Service is accused of 'trying to erase women' as dozens of trusts sign up to Rainbow Badge scheme that marks down hospitals for using words like 'mother'

Dozens of hospitals have signed up to be graded by trans rights charities who tell them to stop using the terms 'mother' and 'woman'.

Angry MPs have called for ministers to step in after 77 trusts joined the NHS Rainbow Badge Scheme, which rewards them for dropping 'gendered language' from policies, forms and signs.

The trusts gain points for referring to maternity patients as 'clients' and calling cervical screening clinics 'colposcopy' instead of women's health.

A former Cabinet minister last night accused the NHS of being 'willing to erase women so they can please radical ideologically-driven campaign groups'.

The scheme is commissioned by NHS England but run by vocal trans rights lobbying groups including Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, who carry out the grading.

They also tell hospitals to introduce gender-neutral toilets and get medics to ask patients their pronouns, leading to fears that the lobby groups are dictating NHS policy.

Staff who just want to treat patients and so speak out against the NHS's focus on gender identity are branded homophobic and transphobic, while facing 'tougher consequences' from bosses.

The revelations will deepen concerns about gender ideology becoming embedded in the health service, after a Mail investigation found that even patients who only temporarily identify as women are allowed into female-only wards.

And it comes even though health bodies have been warned by ministers to rethink their close ties with the likes of Stonewall.

A source close to Health Secretary Steve Barclay told the Mail last night: 'Any scheme which does not recognise the role of women and biological sex in the NHS directly contradicts ministerial steers and raises serious questions of propriety.

'The Secretary of State has been very clear that women should be called women and freedom of speech upheld. He expects that guidance to be followed.'

Former Cabinet minister Ranil Jayawardena said: 'It's extraordinary to learn that the NHS are prioritising pronouns over patient care.

'Surely the simple biology that women are mothers is not lost on today's NHS management?

'It seems that the NHS is willing to erase women so they can please radical ideologically-driven campaign groups. Ministers must step in now.'

The NHS Rainbow Badge scheme was initially devised as a way for staff to show they supported LGBT+ people, by wearing a small enamel pin badge bearing the NHS logo and the pride rainbow.

But it has been turned by NHS England into an 'assessment and accreditation model' to grade trusts according to their inclusivity.

NHS England agreed a £220,000 deal whereby leading charities would grade health organisations on their inclusion work – even though some of them have highly contentious views on gender ideology.

Stonewall supports people being allowed to 'self-identify' as the opposite sex while the LGBT Foundation helped write a recent guide for health bosses that said patients have no right to know if they are being treated by transgender medics.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12451335/NHS-accused-trying-erase-women-trusts-Rainbow-Badge-scheme-hospitals.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Biden Administration Is Stepping Into a Fight Concerning Your Free Speech

On Monday, Biden’s Solicitor General appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear cases pertaining to two laws that have the potential to change the way Americans express themselves on social media platforms. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 were both signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021. While the two bills are significantly different, both share the same goal: They stand up against Big Tech’s censorious behaviors. They also share the fact that the Biden administration wants to shoot them down and use them as an example to deter any other states from protecting online free speech.

Both bills crack down on the aggressive content moderation that occurs on social media platforms and requires the platforms to explain their content-moderation processes to the public. The legal battles that have surrounded TX HB 20 and FL SB 7072 have been long and have made their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they have sat with little to no recent media attention, until this week.

President Biden’s Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, filed an amicus brief to the highest court in the land, arguing that they should consider the cases against Texas and Florida, claiming that their objectives are unconstitutional. Ultimately, the Biden appointee argues for the First Amendment rights of the social media platforms.

This argument that the Solicitor General makes is the exact opposite of the argument being made at the state level in favor of these laws. They are intended to protect the First Amendment rights of the people who maintain these inalienable rights. After all, the Constitution does not afford these rights to corporations and companies, but rather to the American people.

The lawsuits brought by NetChoice, a trade group representing Meta, YouTube, and other Big Tech companies, only solidify the assertion that these social media platforms are attempting to maintain a unilateral right to censorship from the Constitution’s free speech guarantee.

Both pieces of legislation were crafted after many blatant cases of censorship on social media platforms, especially surrounding conservative political speech. The laws attempt to challenge Big Tech and the outsized control they hold over the digital public discourse.

The laws also highlight the hypocrisy of social media platforms and their claim that they are simply bulletin boards or conduits for user speech and that they maintain no editorial component. This claim insulates these entities from liability under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Although it is evident that because they clearly engage in censorship, these platforms do obviously operate in an editorial capacity.

It has also become crystal clear that these platforms operate in an editorial capacity in conjunction with the federal government and federal agencies. The releases of the Twitter Files confirmed what many suspected: that the federal government and its various agencies have been working in tandem with these Big Tech companies for years. From the government’s involvement in removing COVID-19 “misinformation” on platforms, to the FBI working in tandem with Twitter to promulgate certain narratives, to the suppression of certain politicized stories, such as Hunter Biden’s laptop, during the 2020 election season.

It would only make sense that the natural progression of these events would lead to the Biden administration working to squash the laws that would make it more difficult for them to control what Americans can say, see, and have access to on social media platforms.

It would behoove the Supreme Court to follow the lead of Justice Clarence Thomas, who has criticized Section 230’s legal protections given to online platforms and likens these social media platforms to common carriers. If Texas’ or Florida’s laws are upheld by the Supreme Court, it would be a landmark win for free speech and First Amendment rights in the digital age.

https://redstate.com/heartlandinstitute/2023/08/18/the-biden-administration-is-stepping-into-a-fight-concerning-your-free-speech-n2162774

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Riley Gaines says TikTok removed a video in which she never even spoke a single word

In the video, Gaines can be seen eating cereal while a video plays in which an individual announces their pronouns and then proceeds to rattle off a massive list of bizarre self-descriptions.

"I am a white transmasculine, femme, nonbinary, temporarily mostly able-bodied, neuro-divergent, obsessive compulsive, chronically ill, culturally Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, nonmonogamous, demilowromantic, greydemibisexual, survivor of acute and complex trauma, millenial, and cat parent in mental health recovery," the person declares in the video.

"Poor cat," Gaines wrote earlier this month when sharing the video on X.

Gaines is a former University of Kentucky swimmer who has been speaking out against allowing men who identify as women to compete in women's sports.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/gaines-says-video-removed-tiktok

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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‘So Many Are Afraid to Speak Up,’ Sage Steele Says of Leaving ESPN

Sage Steele was an 11-year-old girl watching the 1984 Olympics when she decided to become a sportscaster. Some 39 years later—16 of them with ESPN—the mom of three is leaving the sports network that made her vision a reality.

When people ask why she would leave ESPN, Steele is blunt: No one should have to choose between their dreams and free speech.

“It’s broken my heart,” the former “SportsCenter” co-host says now about how things unfolded at ESPN.

The self-described military brat may not have expected the “cutthroat” environment of sports broadcasting, but the bigger surprise was how differently she was treated for her conservative views. Steele’s outspokenness on the company’s vaccine mandate, race, transgender sports, the George Floyd riots, and other cultural flashpoints landed her in surprisingly hot water.

Hauled into private conversations with ESPN “brass,” Steele was warned to keep her mouth shut.

“All I ever wanted was consistency,” Steele told podcaster Megyn Kelly in a two-hour conversation Thursday that spanned her rocky relationship with Disney-owned ESPN, adding:

And if we are allowing my peers to go on social media—much less on our own airwaves—saying things … that have nothing to do with sports that are political … then I should be allowed on my personal time to give my opinion on my experiences personally, without telling others what to do. … [T]here were different rules for me than everyone else.

In 2021, after she openly blasted the network’s vaccine mandate, ESPN sent Steele home (though it disputes, to this day, that it was a suspension) for violating its unspoken “ban on discussing politics.” The condition to come back: Steele has to apologize, something she says she did not want to do.

“I fought,” she says. “I fought and I begged and I screamed, and I was told that if I want to keep my job, I have to apologize. … I knew there was a line somewhere. I just didn’t know where it was until I crossed it.”

When she returned to work she was terrified, Steele admits now, saying that the workplace had become openly hostile. What bothered her most, she insists, is “the hypocrisy of the rules.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” she says. “You can’t preach diversity and equity and inclusion and tolerance, and then cut people off because they don’t believe the way that you say they’re supposed to believe because of the color of their skin or their gender. It is wrong. And I’m done.”

By 2022, Steele says, she finally had enough. Putting her $3 million salary, credibility, and personal skin on the line, she sued the sports behemoth. Among other things, the lawsuit claimed “Steele was punished not only for exercising her constitutional right to free speech but the content of that speech.”

“I feel like God has put me here for a reason,” Steele said recently, “not just the way He made me, but … to get out there and have this conversation and to call out the hypocrisy, because that is what it is. And until someone has the courage to call it out on a larger platform, this will continue. And frankly, there are so many people who are afraid to speak up.”

Until then, she argues, more people will face the persecution she did:

Normally, you know, especially for a biracial woman who had made it in a man’s industry, the Left would be celebrating you for speaking so openly and taking it. But no, you said the wrong thing. You see, you’re entitled to an opinion just so long as it aligns with their views on race. That’s the problem. Even you as a biracial woman can get slammed, can get criticized, can be called all sorts of terrible things because your views on race only count if they align with theirs.

“I refuse to be quiet about this anymore,” Steele adds. “I don’t care anymore because this is my experience. … I’m allowed to feel the way I feel. When you try to silence me, I’m done.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/21/sage-steele-says-goodbye-to-espn-after-calling-out-hypocrisy/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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