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Showing posts with label Free Speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Free Speech. Show all posts

Monday, September 22, 2025

Do Not Give Up The High Ground On Freedom Of Speech!

@ Manhattan Contrarian

The four years of the Biden presidency were a terrible low point for the protection of freedom of speech in the U.S. A web of government agencies and allied NGOs sprang up with remarkable rapidity to identify and ban disfavored speech, almost always of conservatives. As just a few examples: the White House itself pressured social media platforms to suppress disfavored speech on politically sensitive topics like Covid and climate change; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency collaborated with universities and NGOs like the Stanford Internet Observatory to get disfavored speech banned or suppressed; the Department of Homeland Security formed a Disinformation Governance Board to coerce social media companies to suppress speech deemed “disinformation”; and the FBI conducted wide-ranging investigations of Republican politicians and organizations. The entire enterprise got the accurate nickname of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

This was an extremely important issue that drove many voters to Trump. After Trump was elected, we had every reason to expect that efforts like those of the prior administration to coerce the suppression of opponents’ speech of would come to an end. And, for the most part, they have.

However, the past week has seen two bad unforced errors on the freedom of speech front by high-ranking members of the Trump administration:

Pam Bondi. Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on a podcast with someone named Katie Miller that aired Monday, September 15. NBC News has some quotes of key statements made by Bondi:

Asked if the Justice Department would be cracking down on groups that engage in such speech, Bondi said, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything — and that’s across the aisle.” . . . “You can’t have that hate speech in the world in which we live,” she said. "There is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said, referring to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was assassinated on a college campus in Utah last week.

Brendan Carr. Carr, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, appeared on Wednesday, September 17, on a podcast with someone named Benny Johnson. Quotes of the key sections of the interview can be found at this article in Reason:

Carr warned that there are "actions we can take on licensed broadcasters" that carry Kimmel's show. He said it is "really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast [which owns NBC] and Disney, and say, 'Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run, Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we licensed broadcaster[s] are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion. . . . When you see stuff like this—I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way," he said. "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Both of these statements were badly out of line as a matter of law and policy. But they were also politically damaging. Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, have fought an endless battle to preserve freedom of speech and to claim the high ground of being the protectors of free speech. They need to keep this high ground.

Take Bondi’s remarks first. So-called “hate speech” is absolutely protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has been completely clear on that. The line between protected and not-protected speech is imminent incitement to violence. The Attorney General needs to know these basic principles.

The problem with the supposed “hate speech” category is that identifying it is a judgment call. The left thinks that most everything conservatives and Republicans say is “hate speech” — and if hate speech could be made illegal, and they came to power, their definitions would be enforced with arrests and prosecutions. In the UK, where “hate speech” is illegal, the police have been on a campaign of arresting dozens of people for perceived speech crimes (while completely ignoring, for example, rape gangs). In August a man was arrested for shouting “We love bacon” outside the site of a proposed mosque. Hate speech? Christians have been arrested under the same laws for praying silently.

On Tuesday, September 16, Bondi issued a post on X that appeared intended to correct or modify her statements on the Miller podcast:

Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence.

That’s better, but I think still not a completely correct statement of the law. Although I am not an expert on the First Amendment, I recommend the community note that X has affixed to Bondi’s tweet for what I think is a more accurate statement of the case law:

The Supreme Court ruled it legal to "justify" or celebrate violence or "advocate or teach the duty, necessity, or propriety" of it; but not "incitement" to "imminent" violence (eg telling a mob with weapons to kill someone).

Bondi’s statements on the podcast drew what many took to be a rebuke from none other than Justice Sonya Sotomayor (although Sotomayor did not call out Bondi by name), speaking on a panel at New York Law School on September 16:

“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed.”

Can we hope that Justice Sotomayor might even stand up for free speech of someone she disagrees with in an important case? Probably not. Most recently, in the major case of Murthy v. Missouri — the 2024 case challenging massive government-coordinated speech suppression on issues of Covid lockdowns, masks and vaccines — Sotomayor joined with her liberal colleagues plus Roberts and Barrett to find that none of the plaintiffs had “standing” to complain.

Carr’s statements are exactly the sort of regulatory overreach that conservatives constantly point to as a fundamental problem with the federal bureaucracy. The FCC has the ability to approve or revoke broadcast licenses, and to approve or disapprove corporate transactions among media companies. Therefore, the Chair does not actually need to do anything more than make a veiled suggestion to get regulated entities to toe a political line. And here Carr was not just making a veiled suggestion.

Carr’s remarks drew massive criticism from Democrats in Congress and the media. Yes, these are all people who never said a word about the Biden administration’s Censorship Industrial Complex directed at Republicans. So, they are hypocrites. But Carr never should have given them this opportunity to criticize him. It is likely that Kimmel’s show was losing money, and that Disney/ABC was looking for an excuse to cancel it. But once Carr made his remarks, the firing will always look like bowing to government coercion. And maybe it was. It would have been much better if Kimmel’s firing had been done as a pure business decision, without apparent government interference.

Can we take this opportunity to ask, exactly what function does the FCC perform today? The FCC was created in 1934, in the pre-television era of a small number of radio stations. Two decades later, the FCC was regulating the shared oligopoly of three television networks. At least in that environment you could articulate a rational case for government regulation. Today, there are hundreds of channels and streaming services, distributed over the air and by cable and satellite and wifi. Most of that isn’t even regulated by the FCC. If the FCC were abolished, would anybody miss it?

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

At The Columbia Academic Freedom Council Conference

@ Manhattan Contrarian

On Saturday (September 13) something called the Columbia Academic Freedom Council held a day-long conference here in New York. The Council used the event to hand out awards to some 23 recipients. Each of the recipients had not only been punished or ostracized somehow for speaking out as a dissenter from the groupthink of academia, but had also fought back in some way.

The CAFC is composed of members of the Columbia faculty, most prominently law school professor Philip Hamburger, who was listed as a “Co-Chair” along with four others. The organization’s website indicates that it has over 100 members, most but not all of whose names are listed on the site. One hundred may seem like a substantial number, but Columbia’s website lists close to 4800 full time faculty members.

The day’s program was organized into a series of panels, where each panel’s members were award recipients who got to tell their stories. The recipients included some prominent academics from elite institutions, but also some from less-well-known places, including some from community colleges and high schools.

The entire program was some 10 hours long. I was able to stay for about half of it. In many cases I was familiar with the story of the award recipient, but in many others I was not. I thought readers might be interested in the personal stories from a sample of some of the more and less prominent recipients.

Martin Kuldorff. Kuldorff was probably the most famous of the award recipients at the conference. He was a Professor of Medicine and a biostatistician at Harvard, starting there in 2003. He gained fame in 2020 as one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely circulated petition opposing the lockdown policies then sweeping the world in response to the Covid pandemic. The GBD ultimately got almost 1 million signatures. 

According to this piece from Reason Magazine in April 2024, for his trouble Kuldorff was ....

“booted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) COVID-19 vaccine safety commission and regularly de-boosted on Twitter and YouTube for his views. Former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins labeled him and his co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration ‘fringe epidemiologists’ and demanded a ‘quick and devastating…takedown’ of their call to end lockdowns in favor of a "focused protection" strategy.” 

In 2024, Kuldorff was fired from Harvard, allegedly for failure to take the Covid vaccine, even though he had had the disease, and thus had natural immunity. More recently, in June 2025, Kuldorff has been appointed by new HHS Secretary RFK, Jr., to a new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Roland Fryer. Fryer is also one of the most prominent among the award recipients. He was hired by Harvard as an economics professor in 2003, and in 2007 he became the youngest African American, and second youngest person, ever to receive tenure at that school. His career trajectory was continuously upward until 2016, when he published a research paper concluding that blacks were not more likely than whites to be shot in a given interaction with police. The next year, Fryer fired a long-time personal assistant, who proceeded to accuse him of various acts of sexual misconduct. 

I wrote about this story extensively in a post back in December 2022. None of the allegations against Fryer went as far as accusing him of ever making a pass at a subordinate or of asking for sex. My post links to other articles that contain lists of his allegedly inappropriate statements, most of which amount to off-color jokes. (My favorite was “I learned my negotiating skills trying to get laid in high school.”). The then dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences — Claudine Gay — recommended that Fryer be fired. He ultimately got a two-year suspension, and had his lab and researchers taken away from him. 

Gay went on to become President of Harvard, before very quickly disintegrating in a plagiarism scandal. A film maker named Rob Montz made a documentary about the Fryer affair, and later commented in an interview, “Roland’s work represents a mortal threat to some of the most powerful black people at Harvard,” such as Claudine Gay. Remarkably, Fryer hung on at Harvard, and is still there as far as I can determine. (But then, so is Gay, as a tenured professor rather than as President.)

Tabia Lee. Ms. Lee is an example from the less prominent category. She worked as a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion co-ordinator at a California public community college called De Anza, until fired in 2023. Whereupon she brought a lawsuit, the complaint from which is extensively quoted in this Newsweek piece from July 2023. From Newsweek:

A 53-page lawsuit filed July 10 claims that [Lee] encountered a hostile department "illegally targeting White people on the basis of race." It also says she was accused of "whitesplaining" and not being the "right kind of Black person," and claims she was vilified for refraining from invoking racial stereotypes and refusing to use the term "Latinx" instead of "Latinos." . . . The lawsuit says that she "objected to racial stereotypes peddled by Defendants that targeted both White and Black Americans, bizarrely celebrating Blacks as incapable of objectivity, individualism, efficiency, progress, and other grossly demeaning stereotypes, while condemning Whites for promoting these same values, which Defendants label 'colonialism' and 'White supremacy.'"

I can’t find further information about what Lee is up to today, other than that her lawsuit continues. However, from her presentation, I will say that she is quite the firebrand.

Paul Rossi. Rossi was a high school math teacher at Grace Church School, a private school in Manhattan, when, in 2021, he publicly called out the administration for indoctrinating the students with extreme progressive politics. On April 13, 2021, Rossi published an op-ed in the New York Post titled “We’re damaging kids with ‘Critical Race Theory.’” Excerpt:

“Antiracist” training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race. Furthermore, in order to maintain a united front for our students, teachers at Grace are directed to confine our doubts about this pedagogical framework to conversations with an in-house “Office of Community Engagement” for whom every significant objection leads to a foregone conclusion. Any doubting students are likewise “challenged” to reframe their views to conform to this orthodoxy.

By April 19, after several students complained of feeling “uncomfortable” in his class, Rossi was removed from teaching for the year. He declined to return thereafter. However, he did have a conversation with head-of-school George Davison, which he recorded, in which Davison appeared to agree with Rossi about the student indoctrination, even while reciting progressive mantras in public.

Since his experience in 2021, Rossi has made the rounds of the speaking circuit, continuing to publicize his story.

I feel particularly close to this circumstance for a couple of reasons: 

(1) my son-in-law attended Grace Church School from K to 8; and 

(2) one of my daughters shared a piano teacher with Davison’s kids, as a result of which I met the guy in the context of attending piano recitals at his apartment.

Rebecca Tuvel. And finally, another example from the non-prominent category, but in this case extremely funny. Ms. Tuvel was a junior (assistant) professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, when in 2017 she published an article called “In Defense of Transracialism” in a “peer reviewed” feminist philosophy journal called Hypatia. The article cleared the journal’s peer review process and got published on April 25, 2017. The article compared the case of Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, to that of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as black. Key quote from the article: “Since we should accept transgender individuals' decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals' decisions to change races."

The blowback was immediate. According to a Wikipedia summary here, by April 28, 2017, the article had come under massive attack on Facebook and Twitter. Tuvel was called “transphobic, racist, crazy, and stupid, and was accused of having engaged in ‘epistemic violence.’ Several feminists referred to her as a ‘Becky.’ The article was called ‘violent’, ‘crap’, and ‘wack shit.’” By May 1 the journal had posted an apology on its Facebook page. An open letter of protest to the journal got some 830 signatures.

Remarkably, Ms. Tuvel seems to have survived the controversy, and still teaches today at Rhodes College, where she is listed as an Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy.

So it’s just a small sample of how you get treated in academia if you have the temerity to speak out publicly in opposition to the dominant progressive/woke groupthink. It’s little wonder that few have the courage to do it. But this was a very impressive group.

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

US-UK Trade Deal Hinges on Hate Speech

Will our allies across the pond give ground on the issue of free speech, or pay the price in trade? 

By Andrew Wold, Jr. | May 4, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags:  Articles, Opinion, Politics

Free speech vs hate speech – where does one draw the line? Washington and London are currently negotiating a tariff agreement, and the administration of US President Donald Trump wants the UK government to repeal hate speech laws in order to secure a trade deal between the two nations, the Independent reported on Wednesday, citing claims by sources close to US Vice President JD Vance.

In a recent interview, Vance spoke of his admiration for the UK and expressed optimism about the negotiations. Good chance of agreement, says the VP – but supporters say his concerns over Britain’s hate speech laws “are still a red line.” However, the sources reportedly claimed to the Independent that Vance’s optimism on a trade deal “is a way of putting further pressure on the UK over free speech.”

The UK’s hate speech laws have led to a significant number of arrests. In 2023, UK police detained over 12,000 people – approximately 33 per day – for online messages deemed offensive or distressing under the legislation, according to The Times.

Critics among civil liberties groups argue that these laws are vague and infringe on free speech. Mr. Vance’s recent address to the politically conservative Heritage Foundation think tank was cited as an example of his views on Western culture and free speech being linked to securing an agreement. “No free speech, no deal. It is as simple as that,” the Washington source told the outlet.

The UK has been spared the worst of the massive wave of levies imposed by Trump earlier this month. The country faces a 10% tariff on all goods and 25% on steel, aluminum and automotive imports. It is understood that Britain has already offered to drop its proposed digital services tax as a means of getting a trade deal through. But the US wants to see laws on hate speech repealed as well as plans for a new online safety law dropped. These two issues seem to be the main sticking points from the White House’s perspective.

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The problems between the US and the UK have a history. Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the White House for the first time since Mr. Trump’s return and clashed with Mr. Vance in front of the TV cameras in the Oval Office. The vice-president claimed that free speech was being undermined in the UK and that laws being brought in for online safety were an attack on US tech giants.

Most recently, the trial of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce for silently praying outside an abortion clinic has become another cause celebre in the US, with Mr. Vance criticizing the UK legal system over the case.

Free Speech, Hate Speech, and Human Rights

What is the law on free speech?

Under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act of 1998, “everyone has the right to freedom of expression” in the UK. But the law states that this freedom may be subject to formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society.

What is the law on hate speech?

A number of different UK laws outlaw hate speech. Among them is Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986 (POA), which makes it an offence for a person to use “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior that causes, or is likely to cause, another person harassment, alarm or distress.” This law has been revised over the years to include language that is deemed to incite “racial and religious hatred,” as well as “hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation” and language that “encourages terrorism.”

The Terrorism Act 2006 criminalizes “encouragement of terrorism” which includes making statements that glorify terrorist acts.

Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 makes it illegal to send a message via a public electronic communications network that is considered grossly offensive, or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.

“This offense is incredibly broad and has been used to address jovial, albeit misjudged communications – it carries huge implications for freedom of expression,” says justice and freedom campaign group Liberty.

Why is the debate so controversial?

Criminalizing the incitement of violence or threats “can be seen to be a justifiable limit on freedom of expression,” says Liberty. What is controversial “is the criminalization of language (or behavior) which may be unpleasant, may cause offense but which is not inciting violence, criminality etc,” the organization adds.

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Writing for Prospect magazine, Hugh Tomlinson QC argues that the problem lies with the lack of a UK constitution. “Free speech does not, historically, have the same primacy under English law [as the US],” he explains.

“A proper ‘written’ constitution sets limits on the powers of the institutions of government, but the loose and flexible set of rules that is described as Britain’s unwritten constitution sets no such limits.”

Writing in The Spectator, Lionel Shriver says the UK should follow the US lead.

“Because the alternative is what the UK has now, and it will only get worse: government systematically legislating not just what we say but what we may believe.

~

Andrew Wolf, Jr. is director of The Fulcrum Institute, an organization of scholars dedicated to the classical liberal tradition. He has also been published stateside in American Spectator, The Thinking Conservative, and American Thinker, as well as abroad in International Policy Digest, Times of Israel, and The Daily Philosophy, among others.

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025

There Will Always Be an England! But In Name Only! Part IV

 
Today I posted two articles about the UK's economic and social realities, here, and here, and how if these conflicts continue, they will destroy the UK, and western civilization.
 
You can almost hear the fake surprise in Westminster. “Oh no!” they gasp. “The government has to raise taxes again!” The BBC pretends it’s all part of a grand balancing act, necessary to fund schools, hospitals, and “essential services.” In reality, it’s a protection racket—an ongoing campaign to shovel more of your money into the hands of a parasitic elite.  Let’s be clear about what this week’s news actually means. Every increase in National Insurance, every fiddled threshold in income tax, every surcharge slapped onto fuel or tobacco or flights is not about “the public good.” It’s about enriching people who already own everything. It’s about sustaining a bloated and unreformable state, and about funnelling more cash into corporations that are joined to that state like tapeworms in a colon.
 
As you read what's going on in the UK, and Europe for that matter, one has to wonder if they're sane, do they really believe their nations can continue to exist with their obviously destructive policies?

 "I don't know if you guys in the UK understand how sad it is for us in Canada, and in the US, to watch what you're doing to yourselves."...... "We owe the UK such an immense debt. And to watch you guys spiral yourselves into the ground for... political correctness... you can allow your working class women to be raped en masse statistically and say nothing about it and gaslight people who are telling the truth."..... "It's so sickening, it's so demoralising. It's almost unspeakable." ........"We all hope and pray... that you get your act together, and grow some spine again, and put your country back together, and stand up to these bloody psychopathic bullies and the woke green mob, because it would be a dreadful shame to lose you." - Jordan Peterson

On March 5th Andrea Widburg posted this article, The UK’s race toward Islam continues as now England, and King Charles, a rumored convert to Islam, and the official head of the Church of England, is putting the month long Muslim celebration of Ramadan on the same level as holidays traditionally celebrated by Christians.   All in order to appease a Muslim population that overwhelmingly identify as Muslims first over being British, and their goal for the UK is to be governed by Islamic law.
 
The abuses the UK government is heaping on their citizens is shocking.  There's been a request for an openly, and official, two tier system for criminal sentencing.  One of you're white and Christian, and another " if you are an ethnic minority, you might avoid jail altogether. It amounts to bias against white men and Christians. "The opposition minister Robert Jenrick said that there is a “blatant bias against Christians and straight white men”.  While the UK Sentencing Council has rejected this plan, but the radicals never give up, as the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has urged the Sentencing Council to review the guidance.  
 
And if they refuse, Mahmood has threatened to legislate to give the government powers to overrule the council, and she's getting support from the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer saying he was “disappointed” with the Sentencing Council’s refusal to change guidance and that “all options are on the table” over how the government might respond.  The question one has to ask is what has caused the British elite to hate their own people and their nation so?  
 
Freedom of speech, it's gone!  If you dare express an opinion that doesn't conform to the destructive direction these misfits are taking the nation, they police will come and arrest you, as one parent who faced this called it ‘Kafkaesque’.  
  1. U.K. man fired for saying terrorists who murdered 1,200 Israelis are 'violent and disgusting' - Speaking of 'disgusting'.  Damon Joshua, an employee of Severn Trent Water Supply in the U.K., has been fired from his job due to a social media post he put up in observance of the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on innocent Israelis.......and characterized those who raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered 1,200 Israelis as a “group of violent and disgusting terrorists.”  For mildly — one might say, timidly — stating an obvious truth, he was let go within hours.
  2.  In Britain, ‘transphobic toddlers’ are the new menace - It’s easy to laugh at this madness, but England’s leftists are now where America’s leftists want us to be. 
  3. No Free Speech, No Free Trade  - England is losing its cultural roots and the determination to safeguard the God-given right to free speech.
  4.  The newest hate crime in England: ‘Speak English’ - The Mother Country of Great Britain gave the American colonists the idea that free speech is a good thing....... we’ve just learned that the newest “hate crime” in England, a country determined to control its citizens’ speech, is asking someone to speak English. In one of the great historical ironies, America is why the British don’t have free speech and are subject to this insanity. .........British police warn an elderly man that it could be a "hate crime" because he asked someone to speak in English in England..........
Shakespeare is out, continuing down the road to cultural suicide. 

William Shakespeare has long been considered one of England’s great men because of his extraordinary output of timeless plays and sonnets. They that shaped the English language as well as exporting ideas about British culture...not because the Brits foisted his works on others, but because others recognized their beauty and universality. Now, though, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, as part of the nation’s push for national suicide, which is the premier Shakespeare organization in England, has decided that Shakespeare is just too...English, and that’s bad. In answer to Hamlet’s question (“to be or not to be”), the Trust has determined that Shakespeare is not to be.

The far left lunacy of the UK Govt against free speech even includes an effort to prevent foreign companies to end free speech or face penalties, with their Online Safety Act, which has nothing to do with safety, except to keep them safe from being exposed for their corruption and insanity.  Censorship is being practiced all across Europe, and people are being punished for daring to speak up, and they want this to be the standard in the U.S. also.   Safety is the red herring, tyranny is the the reality.
 
How does a nation go from a Disraeli and Churchill, to a May and Starmer?
 
Today, women, and especially children, are raped and branded in broad daylight in many English towns. The vast majority of the perpetrators are young Muslim immigrant men. Despicably, the ‘authorities’ cannot yet be roused to do anything about it. London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has essentially stated, “Well, that’s just part of living in a large, vibrant and diverse world city.” Excuse me?! Islam directs that infidels are to be either converted, enslaved, or killed! And so, the British have a choice: stiffen up or go down. Salvage their Christian heritage or become part of a new Muslim caliphate.

When Europe fell in love with the scientifically fraudulent insanity of global warming they set a course for economic collapse for themselves, and they must openly acknowledge the Paris Climate Agreement was doomed from the start, which Trump understood during his first term and dumped it, and did it again this term.  

It's being reported the Brits are desperate for their own Donald Trump, and many think Farage is the man, as he's launching his campaign based on deportations, DOGE, and tax cuts.  Will it happen?  Or will the UK elite decide lawfare the left attempted against Trump is in order to get Farage arrested as has been done in Brazil, Turkey, and now in France  preventing LePen from running in 2027.


Monday, October 28, 2024

The Nitwit Brigade on Parade, I

Nitwits, RINO's, and Ydiots: Oh My! 

By Rich Kozlovich, Tags: 

On January 18, 2023 I published this piece, Nitwits on Parade, laying foundation for all that was to follow with a quote by John Nolte :

Image by Andrea Widburg
People who believe they know the truth split into two different species. The first is the insufferable authoritarian willing to oppress, bully, and launch wars to impose their ideal on others. The second are those who seek to share and spread that truth through art, creation and the building of something. Hollywood used to be the latter. Now it’s the former. As a result, the industry has become stale, exhausting, pedantic, mean-spirited, smug, and conformist.  John Nolte

fascist pig’, and Karine Jean-Pierre agrees with her. After all, if Joy said that then it must be true.  Right?  So much for the reason Julia Louis-Dreyfus supports Kamala.  While acknowledging she's "not a politician, and not an expert on various issues that we’re up against today", but she's completely sure if Kamala becomes President "the country’s discourse will become “kinder and more effective.”' 

Really? 

Does that mean the Democrats will stop calling Christians, conservatives, Republicans, traditional Jews names, and claiming they're all racists and/or Nazis, and fascists pigs,  comparing Trump to Hitler?  And according to Bernie Sanders because Trump Is 'vulgar'. many Republicans are voting for Harris.  And just  how many is that Bernie?  

Yeah, right, in your dreams, all the while the media promotes Trump's assassination.  However, as the attacks intensify, Trump becomes more popular.

On September 29, 2024 Lynne Lechter posted this piece,  American Yidiots on steroids outlining who they are and how they continue to support those who are in support of policies which are completely destructive to civilization, and that runs the gaumet.

Then we have Jeff Flake who says if you believe in the rule of law you can't vote for Trump. Okay, so who instituted all these bogus lawsuits against Trump by twisting existing law, and ignoring real crimes committed by Hillary, and the Biden Crime Family?  Who initiated efforts by the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches because you know those darned traditional Catholics are actually dangerous radicals.  They want to hear the mass in Latin.  Wow! you can see how dangerous that is.  And this was being done nationwide the FBI lied about it, this is right from the top of the Biden administration, and my files on the corruption of the rule of law by the Democrats is large.  And can anyone name one misuse of the justice system by the Trump administration?

Chris Matthews says he's never seen a more heroic figure than Liz Cheney, and AOC melts down over Trump working at McDonald's.  Geraldo Rivera says woe is us if Trump is "selfishly" elected, and backs this up with.......nothing!

Brennan claims it's absurd and appealing how many Americans support Trump.  Now at least in his case there's a degree of logic for him in that statement, because if trump is elected he, as well as a host of others, may well end up in jail for crimes the Democrats ignored.   Not lawfare, crimes!!

Then we have Harrison Ford, and he's definitely not a real life Indiana Jones as he's supporting Kamala because "She Will Protect Your Right to Disagree with Her".  Really?  As we take a look at how that's been working out during the Biden/Harris administration, and have to conclude this about Harrison Ford.  Ya just can't fix stupid.

Ben Stiller, Andy Cohen, and Doug Emhoff are urging fathers to vote for Kamala Harris who says she intends to impose abortion on demand on the nation and prosecute any medical person who refuses to perform them.  Urge Fathers to Vote for Kamala Harris....and get this..... Because ’Abortion an issue for Men and Families’.  Strange moral universe they live in.   It's interesting that Emhoff is now a leftist hero, when in point of fact he's lived his life in ways the left allegedly detests, here and here, and if he was a conservative or a Republican the media would have been all over that, but we're to believe he's all about family, and apparently feminist celebrities agree since they're silence on this is deafening. 

Beyonce appeared at a rally for Kamala because she was there as a mother.  So supporting a person who personifies the unbridled murder of the innocent seems rational to her?    Sarah Jessica Parker endorses Kamala, with not much reasoning behind her support, Eminem says Kamala will protect freedom of speech.  Freedom of speech from the VP of an administration that's done everything it can to eliminate the First Amendment.  Ya just can't fix stupid.

 Bill Gates Reportedly Donates $50 Million in Support of Kamala Harris, and I keep wondering what's really behind this.  There's been talk about Gates and Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump has said he'll release the list the DOJ has been keeping secret. Is he on that list?  We'll see.

 
There are those brilliant minds on The View, the show that will cost I.Q. points by the minute — Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, etc., mind-numbed morons all, like that other old lady not known for her brain power, Cher!Taylor Swift, that shining example of wisdom and judgment, endorsed Harris via Instagram immediately following the Trump/Harris debate.......John Legend, Cardi B, Billie Eilish, Neil Young, Stevie Nicks........those boneheads always ready to instruct the rest of us as to how we should vote: George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Rosie O’Donnell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Cynthia Nixon, Matt Damon, Lin-Manuel Miranda, LeVar Burton, Ken Burns, Mark Hamill, Spike Lee, etc..........few, if any, have any particular knowledge about how government works.  It is doubtful that any of them have ever bothered to read the Constitution, let alone grasp its brilliance.  Most of them don’t know that we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy........They think they are important, but they are not.  Let them all fade away, never to be heard from again......
 
Many of these celebrities are calling voters in swing states to support Kamala, and Beetlejuice wants men to stop going to Trump rallies.  The one thing you may not have noticed in this election we're not seeing all these misfits threatening....."threatening mind you".... to leave the nation if Trump is elected s they did in the past.  Well, not only did no one care, there were those who offered to pay their airfare.   So, did these misfits leave the nation that made all them wealthy, privileged, and largely isolated from the vagaries that impact the average citizen? No!  That didn't move the needle one iota then, and their support of Kamala won't move it now, because  the nation sees Kamala as she is, an epic failure.  Even failing to get endorsements from traditional leftist allies.  
 
If they support Kamala that means they believe things that are not only unbelievable, they're irrational, and insane, confirmation that leftism is a mental disorder.  In a leftist world thinking thoughts that don't confirm and support leftist insanity are now illegal in the UK, and Kamala would do everything in her power to bring that to America. 
 
 It really is that simple!

Monday, October 14, 2024

Only Tyrants Fear Free Speech

By @ Sultan Knish Blog


“It’s really hard to govern today,” former Climate Czar John Kerry complained at the World Economic Forum. “The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information.”

And when it comes to a source that Kerry, the WEF and their political allies don’t like, “our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence”.

Four years ago, Obama offered a similar complaint that, “if we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work.” Obama and Kerry’s definition of democracy is a system where everyone agrees on what’s true and what isn’t.

This regime of facts was very much on display when ABC News moderators crudely intervened in the last presidential debate to support their chosen candidate. CBS News was barred from having its moderators intervene directly in the debate and instead resorted to showing promos for its website where its activist reporters will ‘fact check’ the vice presidential candidates.

Having debates is a curious thing under a government of facts whose premise, as Kerry and Obama argued, is that there is nothing to debate. Candidates for public office can state their views only to have the public be told which of those views is correct and which is wrong.

And then it’s the moderators and the agenda they represent that is really running the country.

Obama argued that there can be no democracy where there are disputes, but it’s actually the other way around, where there are no disputes, there is no democracy. The greater the disputes, the greater the democracy. The fewer the disputes, the less democracy there is.

Democrats claim to want to uphold democracy. They chant about the power of the people. But if what they really want is to implement the popular view, why are they so terrified of it?

The problem, as Kerry and many others have already explained, is that they are not doing what the people want, but convincing the people to want whatever the government does. Their version of democracy requires harnessing the will of the people and then disregarding it where it differs from their will. There’s a name for that sort of thing and it isn’t democracy.

Democracies can be justified by the will of the people but tyrannies rely on some abstract virtue. In a secular society where religion is a diminishing force, Democrats claim that their tyranny is based on the absolute truth of their beliefs as proven by science, by experts and the facts. Both science and facts however arise from a trial and error process not authoritarian assertion.

What the Democrats offer isn’t democracy, nor is it science: it’s dogma propping up a tyranny.

Scientists and democracy proponents don’t fear dissenting ideas. Democrats and tyrants do.

Ever since Hillary lost the election, Kerry has been the latest in a long line of Democrats complaining about social media. “”The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing,” he moaned at the WEF because it undermines any governing consensus.

“The First Amendment doesn’t require private companies to provide a platform for any view that is out there. At the end of the day, we’re going to have to find a combination of government regulations and corporate practices that address this,” Obama had threatened.

A year later the Biden administration was regularly intimidating Facebook and Twitter into taking down speech, including jokes, that it found objectionable in the name of fighting misinformation.

California’s Gov. Newsom just signed bills into law cracking down on AI generated memes. Congressional Democrats are mulling new forms of action over what they call ‘deepfakes’. These serial tech panics invariably relate to speech and the empowerment of individuals to dissent from whatever artificial consensus has been imposed on the public by the authorities.

The common denominator is a fear of ideas. If speech is decentralized then it can’t be controlled. And if speech can’t be controlled then, as Kerry put it, governance is impossible.

The purpose of government then becomes to control speech by controlling technology.

Big Tech monopolies that centralize technology allow for direct integration with the state. Wealthy Democrat donors fund media outlets which act as official censors through their ‘fact-checking’ operations. Tech platforms are pressured by the government into censoring whatever the media objects to and paying the media for the privilege of its censorship.

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and Mark Zuckerberg’s disinterest in continuing to prop up Facebook censorship have crippled the technological end of the public-private censorship regime which has infuriated not only Kerry but many other members of his political movement.

NBC News claims that “misinformation” about the election is “running rampant” on Facebook. Misinformation, disinformation, deepfakes and other similarly constructed terms treat speech as a dangerous thing. Misinformation “spreads” like a virus, it “runs rampant” until it’s censored. Its existence threatens the governing consensus through which the regime rules the people.

The obsession with stamping out “misinformation” has so overridden the liberal DNA of free speech that the ACLU now fights ‘misinformation’ rather than upholding free speech and PEN America urges that it is “important to correct misleading or false information”. It’s important because by controlling information, their political allies and agenda control the people.

John Kerry has a point. It’s hard to govern when everyone is free to speak their mind. That’s why America was a bold experiment in freedom whose purpose was to be hard to govern. Americans being hard to govern is not, as Obama and Kerry think, a bug, but a feature.

Pundits have been complaining that America is ungovernable not just for the last twenty years, but the last two hundred years, and being ungovernable is what makes us a free people. In the haze of trigger warnings, warning labels, hate speech mandates and speech crackdowns, it becomes all too easy to forget that free speech is our natural birthright as Americans.

And the establishment wants us to trade that birthright for some fact checking pottage.

European powers were terrified of a country where anyone could say anything. And they still are. Because a country where people are free to say anything is also free to do anything.

America’s accomplishments would not have been possible without its freedoms.

The war on speech is always carried on in the name of some imaginary crisis, hate, social justice or climate change, that requires the government to override those freedoms. Kerry and Obama object to allowing people to debate whether the crisis is real because the crisis is the source of their totalitarian powers. And if they lose the debate then they lose their tyranny.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading. 


Tuesday, October 8, 2024

My Gazette: Media Collapse and Corruption, Part III. The Trump/Harris Debate

By Rich Kozlovich, Tags:

‘we lose total control’!  And uses the red herring all that's necessary to protect our children.  And there's no question that's an issue, it's not the reason for her warm compassion.  It's a red herring to prevent liars such as she from getting away with their lies, and the Trump/Harris/Vance/Walz debates is a perfect example.  Oh, by the way, we do remember that Donna Braille fed her the questions for her debate with Trump. We do remember that....don't we?   So this is the media she thinks protects our children?  Did I get that right?  

Let's not delude ourselves, all this clabber from these leftist misfits is nothing short of an open declaration of war on free speech.

During the Trump/Harris debate, and it was clear Trump won, but it was also clear Harris didn't do badly, and the moderators were not only running interference for Harris, they had every intention to promote all the leftist memes irrespective of the truth by injecting their own views into the debate.  That's not what debates are for, and that wasn't a debate.  And it's certainly seems clear to me the questions were handed to Harris in advance.  I'll tell you what, we'll come back to that.

  • There was no debate on Tuesday. -Trump represents hard work, diligence, and love of country, while Harris represents flighty radical ideals and flaunts her newfound, but undeserved situation. If you weigh the two against the future of the country, there is no debate, there never was.......Trump tried to have one, but the Democrats knew going in that they couldn’t let that happen. Harris is an unqualified pretender whose only hope was to lie and deceive, while Muir and Davis ran interference for her.......
  • TRUMP WAS RIGHT! New DOJ Numbers Reveal ABC Hack David Muir Fake Fact-Checked President Trump on Violent Crime Numbers – Crime Is Up 40% Since Trump -Where’s the Apology?On Tuesday night during President Trump’s second presidential debate against the Democrat candidate and first presidential debate against Kamala Harris ABC’s David Muir stopped the debate to fake fact-check President Trump on violent crime statistics in the United States. Here is the exchange:........................ 
  •  ABC's Trump fact check blows up -  September 22, 2024 by Mike McDaniel -  Crime rates are on the ballot in November.  Now infamously, ABC’s David Muir, during the Trump/Harris debate, “fact checked” Donald Trump’s assertion that crime rates had increased under the Harris/Biden Administration, arrogantly sniffing they were decreasing. That was only one of several ludicrously false “fact checks” against Trump, as opposed to no fact checks at all against Harris. What a surprise. It was only a few days later that the truth came out, but first, let’s explore some of the reasons why statistics, particularly those of the FBI, are blatantly false.............
  • An Unserious Debate in Which Trump got the Strongest Play - Clarice Feldman -  If life were more serious, we’d be paying attention to the administration and the UK’s latest efforts to start World War III which strikes me as the best overriding reason to vote for Trump.  ..........The cats laugh last...............
It was so bad that many who are typically still members of the Pravda Media were "disgusted" by the performance of the moderators.

Did Kamala Harris get the questions ahead of time?  There are those who claim that happened, and it's provable.

So, is that charge provable?  Well, given she still babbled and never really answered any questions, and she didn't look like a dazed dingbat, you have to wonder why when speaking on the fly she typically babbles incoherently spewing out  "word salad" nonsense without a memorized script or a teleprompter.  Here's the true intellectual depth of Kamala Harris in these next two links

So, if her performances outside that one debate were so dramatically idiotic, why should we believe she didn't get the questions ahead of time? And why are the questions secret in the first place?   Publicize them and then just let each candidate state their positions, without any moderator interference at all.  But that's not what these networks want, because doing in the way they've been doing it for all these years they can rig the debates!  And everyone in the media and Washington know it.  But times are changing. 

What they didn't expect, and still aren't prepared for, is the kick back when they're corruption becomes exposed.  The alternative media is now ascendant, and they're toast. 

Why a Former Clinton Pollster Was Disturbed by the ABC News Debate -  It’s not just conservatives crying foul over the overt bias during ABC News’ debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Even a pollster for the Clintons was aghast at the spectacle, to the point where he thought the results should be tossed since it was clear that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis put their finger on the scale. Mark Penn discussed his concerns on Fox News yesterday, adding that he felt the pair damaged the institution for presidential debates. ....
And now it's Mark Penn September 14, 2024 by Silvio Canto, Jr. ABC has a quite a bit to explain on this story.  The ABC ambush of Trump, originally called the Trump-Harris debate, keeps on keeping on. Enter Mark Penn:  Well, this is awkward for ABC.  Mark Penn, the former Clinton aide and current Chairman of the Harvard CAPS Harris Poll didn't mince words, even though he thinks Harris has run a good campaign. But he thinks ABC did a horrible job and that it might have been planned.  This is big because Mr. Penn is a Democrat. But more important, he is a fair man.........
 
Here was my final analysis of that Debate Aftermath, and if anyone doubts how vile the media has become this should dispel any further doubts.  Think about this.  I was an exterminator for 40 years, and if the bugman can dig out all this information, then how is it possible for these people who are at the center of the information universe not know it?  

Simple, they suffer from two serious mental disorders.  Just as so many scientists suffer from , which has been compounded by a massive infection of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Monday, October 7, 2024

News and Views

By Rich Kozlovich

I've not posted much about the two debates because the national consensus is clear.  Both Trump and Vance won, hands down,  even with the help of a corrupt, antagonistic, and lying media promoting a leftist agenda, both Kamala and Walz looked like dimwits.

Ford has lost billions on their ridiculous electric vehicles agenda, and so what do they do? Double down on stupid.  It's mind boggling. The same people who are working to destroy the world's energy production, are the same people telling us to convert to electric vehicles. How in the world did that stupid gene become so ubiquitous? Answer, it was always been there, but mostly dormant, all that was needed to fan that ember of stupidity into flame was a thoroughly corrupted system of education. And it's here, and maybe ... just maybe....  it's a good time to look at eliminating tenure in academia.

  • My 

But it gets better all the time.   It turns out if the world is going to embrace AI and quantum computing, and it is, then and in order to do that the energy needs are going to be ....MASSIVE....!  Far beyond what we're producing now, and so far beyond what all these idiotic "alternative" environmentally destructive energy schemes are capable of producing.  

These expensive alternative energy programs are at best unreliable, and so unreliable that traditional power plants have to be built and maintained and running on stand by in order to supply power when these stupid green sources fail to work, such as when the sun stops shining in the winter and the wind stops blowing in the summer. In order to have ‘alternative’ energy we have to pay for energy we aren’t using in order to pay for energy we don’t need. How stupid can we get?

Solution?  Traditional energy production ramped way up, and nuclear.  And guess who's all on board with that.  Mister (globalism is beautiful, all leftism is good and pure, reduce the world's population, eat bugs to save the world from global warming himself) Bill Gates.  Remarkable! 

FEMA is a DEI disaster, the left loves hurricane Helene, and while the people in these states are suffering terribly, the left loves it because conditions are so bad all these Republican strongholds may not:
 
"be able to cast their ballots".  Due to... "FEMA's arrogance and interference....... reportedly one director in North Carolina who was denying aid was beaten by locals frustrated by his conduct. In some other communities, local sheriffs threatened to arrest FEMA workers if they hindered rescue and aid work."  ...........FEMA blew out its budget to pay for illegals, now it's using its remaining resources to block aid from private citizens October 3, 2024 by Monica Showalter They're from the government and they're here to help themselves........  Axelrod gloats that North Carolina's Hurricane Helene victims in pro-Trump areas may be unable to vote.
 
Given their incompetence, and their corruption, and massive waste of America tax dollars I think we need to ask if it's time to abolish FEMA?
 
Biden wants to give millions to Lebanon, and billions to Ukraine, which is being stolen hand over fist, and then says he's out of money to give to Americans "who remain stranded, homeless, powerless, and without access to necessities like food and water.".........."Are American lives not as important to the Democrats as the lives of illegal aliens? Apparently not, in the eyes of the Democrats. Make no mistake about it, siege and starvation are tools of warfare. And the Democrats are, by calculation, waging war against the dying citizens of western North Carolina."......

But the real fault for this hurricane is global warming, right?  Well, since the world stopped warming over 25 years ago, it isn't global warming any longer, it's climate change, which encompasses everything and anything.  And we know it's true because the media says so. Or then again.....is it possible they're lying?  

However, I now think we all should give CNN a round of applause.   In spite of all their lies and corruption, (if lies and corruption defined being a predator, they'd be an apex predator)  they've apparently decided it would be financially better for them to have less viewers than they do now, which has been steadily shrinking.  So, they've now decided you will have to pay a monthly fee of $3.99 to watch them spout their lies.  What could possibly go wrong?  I wonder if anyone there remembers just how successful their pay for view CNN+ streaming service worked for them?  For those who don't know, it failed.

Let's try and get this right.  Anthropogenic Global Warming is one of the greatest scientific frauds ever perpetrated on humanity, and if the media embraces it, you know it's a lie. This link will take you to my global warming commentaries.

Helene was a monster storm destroying homes, power infrastructure, bridges, destroying whole towns, killing over 200 people with untold numbers still missing, through out Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.  The estimated cost? Over three hundred billion dollars.  But not to worry, America is going to provide $157 Million in humanitarian aid to people affected by  the crisis in Lebanon.   And who are these people in Lebanon?  

(Remember the people displaced there are Hezb'allah who started the war, not the Christians, Druze, and Sunni Moslems whose communities Israel did not target and who remain safely in place.)

As for those Americans devastated by Helene, Kamala  says:

“… the federal relief and assistance that we have been providing has included FEMA providing $750 for folks who need immediate needs being met, such as food, baby formula, and the like.  And you can apply now.”  

Wow, a whole $750 bucks from the Obama/Biden/Kamala/Walz/Mayorkas cabal, while Dolly Parton is personally donating a million dollars for hurricane Helene relief efforts.  Why's FEMA out of money?  Because they lavished their funds on illegal migrants.  The agency Mayorkas claimed two months ago was totally prepared for such and event.  

Who really is Kamala's base?  Let's try this: Those who are mentally disturbed, amoral, immoral, dependent on government in some way, along with those who are ignorant and stupid. What could possibly go wrong?  A lot!  If there was any doubt America's military leadership has been corrupted by Obama resulting in a military that's incapable of defending the nation, we now have over 200 retired Generals and Admirals endorsing Trump and address why they feel that's necessary. 

Talking more about doubling down on stupid, there's always, Liz Chaney, who the Democrats now love, along with her father, the man they vilified as a real life Darth Vader for decades, and now believe these two misfits are going to rally a massive number of Republicans against Trump.  "What a time to be alive."   

Well Liz, enjoy the limelight.  The Republicans hate you, and the Democrats are laughing at you, and when the election is over, no matter how it turns out, no one will want you around them, because your legacy will be a Benedict Arnold legacy, right along with your dad.  I often wonder what her mother thinks, since she's been silent over all this.   Liz is now campaigning with Kamala, and I know the real reason for that.   It's a competition to see who can be crowned the most unlikable person in America.   I'm just surprised George Conway isn't on the stage with them.  George Conway claims Trump is another Hitler and a cancer on American life, and  Caroline Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani's daughter says Trump as a disease’.   Does anyone beside me think that falls under the category of being justifiably certifiable?

Then we have Democrats, masters at projection, accusing Trump of election interference, which is like Stalin accusing someone of being inhumane.   

"That is the ultimate danger of a Harris/Walz administration. Starting from deep in the well of corruption, how much lower will they go? The answer: as low as necessary to destroy the republic and replace it with “our democracy.” 

"As the venerable saying goes, you can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out."

Finally, we just gotta see the humor in this.  Mexico's new President, Claudia Sheinbaum who is defined in one word, leftist, and appears with the approval of the drug cartels, has been sworn in what's being called a ‘Satanic’ Inauguration Ceremony.   A nation awash in murder, child sex trafficking, illegal drugs, much of which goes on with the corrupt acceptance of government officials, is now wanting to sue America gun makers for ten billion dollars.  Yep, all that corruption is the fault of American gun makers.    

It's not only time for a border wall, it's time we totally shut down immigration, deport all the illegals, most of them to Mexico who allowed them to cross their country into America, and end the North American Trade agreement putting massive tariffs on anything coming from Mexico, or even cutting Mexico out of the picture entirely.