MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Facebook: More Government Censorship by Judith Bergman

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14293/facebook-government-censorship

As indicated by the US in its statement, the problem with these government-led drives for more censorship in the name of fighting “terrorist and violent extremist content online” is where one draws the line as to what constitutes “hate speech”, and the extent to which such drives can manage to uphold the rights of citizens to free speech.

In Europe, hate-speech laws have increasingly been used to shut down the speech of citizens who disagree with government migration policies.

The claim of preventing the spread of terrorist content has also been used as an excuse in attempts to shut down political opponents….

At the same time, the different signatories to the Christchurch Call to Action appear to have different views on what constitutes terrorism in the first place, further complicating how one should define ‘terrorist content’.

It is often argued that Facebook is a private enterprise and therefore free to censor whatever it wishes.

However, Facebook and the other internet giants, such as Google, YouTube (a subsidiary of Google), and Twitter, have come to control the flow of information on the internet, to such a degree – as virtual monopolies — that they have become the ‘public square’ of our times. That outcome makes them far more than merely private enterprises and endows them with a special responsibility: Those who cannot publish on Facebook or Twitter, effectively no longer have full freedom of speech.

Governments have always known that free speech can be controlled on social media — there is no internet freedom in countries such as China or Russia. For years, however, Western governments have also been controlling the conduct of free speech on the internet – in the name of fighting supposed ‘hate speech’. Controlling free speech has taken the form of ‘cooperating’ with the internet giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and You Tube — on voluntary initiatives such as the EU “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online”, which requires social media giants to act as censors on behalf of the European Union and to remove within 24 hours content that is regarded as “illegal hate speech”.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Speech That Should Be Punished By Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/EsEmmi

Much has been written about the attacks on free speech, especially at universities and colleges. Speakers with conservative viewpoints are routinely banished from important venues, denied attendance, picketed, or subjected to the “hecklers’ veto.” At the University of California Berkeley and other campuses where conservative speech has been met with disorder, activists have justified it because, they claim, “speech is violence.” Gone is adherence to the maxim of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “If there be time to . . . avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Speakers must be held accountable for their words, to be sure. But sometimes “accountability” is ideological and unfair. Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers discovered this when, at an academic conference in 2006, he speculated about the preponderance of men working as professors of mathematics and physical sciences at elite universities. Although Summers acknowledged that women confronted barriers such as discrimination and disproportionate family responsibilities, he hypothesized that there might be other factors, like men’s superior performance in tests measuring mathematical ability. Summers was vilified and ridiculed, and eventually resigned.

Another example of caving to mob rule at Harvard was the law school’s decision to strip law professor Ronald Sullivan, Jr., of his position as faculty dean of a college residence hall. The reason? Some students felt “unsafe” because Sullivan represented Harvey Weinstein against charges of sexual misconduct. As Sullivan put it, “Unchecked emotion has replaced thoughtful reasoning on campus. Feelings are no longer subjected to evidence, analysis or empirical defense. Angry demands, rather than rigorous arguments, now appear to guide university policy.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump’s ‘The Squad’ Tweet: The Right Message Said The Wrong Way J. Frank Bullitt

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/16/trumps

When President Trump tweeted Sunday that “‘Progressive’ Democrat congresswomen” should “go back” to the countries they came from, the vapors swept through the political class and media. Granted, the tweet was crude. But the delivery should not invalidate the point.

Both parties condemned the tweet. And journalists, who can never find anything a Democrat says to even be mildly objectionable, or untrue, predictably responded as if Trump had hung a portrait of Hitler in the Oval Office, which is how they react nearly every time he opens his mouth or fires off a tweet. The backlash was more overheated than the tweet.

For the record, here’s the tweet in its entirety:

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

American-Hating Americans Are the Ultimate Ingrates and Hypocrites Once again, Trump stands up for Americans who love their country. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274320/american-hating-americans-are-ultimate-ingrates-bruce-thornton

“As for Trump, once again he has said what many Americans think, but seldom hear from the Republican elite. And he has stood up for those same Americans who love their country, not because it’s perfect, not because they think its history is sinless, but because it has in word and deed shown itself to be the “last best hope” we fallen mortals have in a tragic world. And most of all, we love America because it is who we are, its ideals the unum that allows the pluribus to become a people yet keep its diversity. There’s not much more we can expect from imperfect human beings.”

With his usual flair for hyperbole and indifference to factual details, Donald Trump last week tweet-blasted the so-called “Squad” of female freshman Congressmen “of color” for slandering America as racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and numerous other empty epithets. Though Trump was careless for suggesting, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”––since only one, Ilhan Omar, was born abroad––his sentiment is still valid, and has been shared for decades by millions of Americans angry over their homeland being demonized by immigrants and fellow citizens alike.

This sentiment was memorably captured by country singer Merle Haggard in his hit “Fightin’ Side of Me.” Released in December 1969, the song expressed the anger of the “Silent Majority” that had just put Richard Nixon in the White House. And the lyrics identified who Americans were angry at: the free, comfortable New Leftists, college students, bougie hippies, and liberal elite fellow-travelers who burned the American Flag, slandered our soldiers as baby-killers, and called their country “AmeriKKKa.” Haggard especially targeted the antiwar activists who insulted our troops even as they were fighting and dying, and who “love our milk and honey” but “preach about some other way of livin’.” Sound familiar?

But it was one line in the chorus that summed up many Americans’ attitude: “If you don’t love it leave it.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Deranged Leftists Surround Lone Conservative Outside Aurora ICE Facility: By Debra Heine

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/deranged-leftists-surround-lone-conservative-outside-aurora-ice-facility-youre-a-fcking-btch/

Unhinged, profanity-spewing, anti-American agitators verbally abused a conservative activist over the weekend when she took a stand outside the Colorado ICE facility where protesters took down the American flag and replaced it with a Mexican flag. “You’re a “f*cking b*tch!” one protester screamed in the conservative’s face. “You’re a stupid-ass, privileged-ass b*tch!”

In addition to taking down Old Glory on Friday, protesters participating in the “March to Close Concentration Camps” in Aurora, also wrote “Abolish ICE” on a “Blue Lives Matter” flag and hoisted it upside down next to the Mexican flag.

According to Denver-based political pundit Ashley StClair, members of Aurora’s City Council were in attendance when the leftists replaced the American flag with the Mexican flag.

Ashley StClair @stclairashley
“As if the situation at Aurora ICE couldn’t get any worse, members of Aurora City Council were in attendance while the US flag was being replaced with the Mexico flag. These elected officials watched silently as deranged protestors disrespected our flag, troops, & law enforcement.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Jihadist Evil Unites with Leftist Evil By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/jihadist_evil_unites_with_leftist_evil.html

The Left has historically despised Jews, Judaism, Zionism, and Israel.  So it is quite ironic that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez employs the language of the Holocaust in discussing open borders where illegals are coming in by the thousands. Not only does she besmirch the memory of those who were murdered for being Jewish, she displays an abysmal ignorance of the horror of the Holocaust.

But she is emblematic of the fact that “two-thirds of American millennials surveyed in a recent poll cannot identify what Auschwitz is.” Thus, “according to a study released on Holocaust Remembrance Day… knowledge of the genocide that killed 6 million Jews during World War II is not robust among American adults.” And this lack of education is not limited to America.

So this historically ignorant woman bandies words like concentration camps with zero comprehension of what she is saying.  The abuse of language and the distortion of historical events is standard operating practice among Leftists, who simply do not care about facts and credible sources as they clamor for illegal aliens to flood our borders to shore up their own political base. 

For if they are truly troubled about victims, they are strangely mute when it comes to speaking on behalf of the Yazidis and the Christians who are being slaughtered by Muslims throughout the world.  But these beleaguered groups do not advance the Left’s agenda of destroying America.

I refuse to use the acronym AOC since it elevates this woman’s status.  The photo-ops of Ocasio-Cortez’s faux anger and angst camouflage her true nature.  The drama queen claims to be “the boss” as she displays her craven arrogance.  She ignores that these illegals are choosing to come to America — whereas Jews and others deemed “unfit to live” were rounded up by the Nazis and herded into concentration/extermination camps where they were slaves and ultimately gassed and burnt.  But as Kevin D. Williamson has written “[t]he Jews can be whatever their enemies need them to be.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK Labor Party sinks deeper into Jew-hatred By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/uk_labour_party_sinks_deeper_into_jew_hatred.html

It is time to start worrying about the fate of Jews living in the United Kingdom.  One of its two major political parties is endorsing the politics of the most obscene Jew-hatred.  Last week, the Mother of Parliaments welcomed to Westminster Palace an Arab politician who calls Israel “a Jewish cancer.”

Via the U.K. Daily Mail:

A Jordanian MP who has made virulently anti-Semitic comments was welcomed into the Palace of Westminster last week by a Labour Shadow Minister.

Yahya Al-Saud, who is notorious for praising terrorism in Palestine, was greeted at Portcullis House by Labour frontbencher Fabian Hamilton, shadow minister for peace and disarmament.

M.P. Fabian Hamilton (via Wikimedia Commons/JPost).

The controversial Jordanian was ushered into Parliament for a series of meetings, adding fresh fuel to claims that anti-Semitism is not being taken seriously by the party.  His visit also prompted campaigners with the Jordanian Opposition Coalition to write to Home Secretary Sajid Javid, questioning why the M.P. was allowed entry into Britain.

At this point, it is fair to ask if Britain’s Jews need to follow French Jews in fleeing their homeland.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Rojo – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/topic/politics/

Early on in this film about Argentina, we see a solitary man sitting at a table in a crowded restaurant. Another man walks in and stares at him unrelentingly, eventually telling the waiter that he should be given that table since he is ready to order while the man already seated is waiting for his late wife To tell you more about what happens next would be a spoiler except to say that most of it is unexpected and the degree of tension the director (Benjamin Naishtat) builds from this mild beginning is unnerving, brilliant and a sweeping foretelling of events to follow.

Rojo consists of several seemingly disparate set pieces which include an abandoned house being stripped of its furnishings, an eclipse of the sun, a romantic encounter between a young girl and her boyfriend a magic act in a nightclub and several speechifiers who appear in case the audience isn’t sophisticated or sufficiently knowledgeable about Argentina’s history in the 1970’s. Some of these actually lessen the power of the more oblique examples of predominantly male aggression in all forms and many different ages. There is a subtlety to this, particularly in the scene of the eclipse as the sun goes black and then a blazing red, nature’s own rojo as the source of all our light as well as something with the power to blind the viewer Similarly the scene with the boyfriend and later with his car buddies extends the basis of authoritarian brutality down to the everyday behavior or teenagers. the character of the private detective is another ambiguous persona – hellbent of pursuing the villain in the case he was hired for but unwilling to be as helpful to a mother whose son “has disappeared”

Rojo is a welcome addition to the otherwise predictable big budget summer movies that are the antithesis of this quiet genre. It is well worth seeing and discussing and lends itself to probing for additional insights related specifically to Argentina’s politics and more broadly to males in western culture. You will leave the theater thinking, and that’s a good thing to observe nowadays.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Don’t Let Turkey Defect to Russia NATO’s objective should be to outlast Erdogan and his provocative behavior. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on July 16th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-let-turkey-defect-to-russia-11563232042

As Europe moved toward war in the summer of 1914, two battleships were being built for the Ottoman Empire in British shipyards. Worried about signs of an Ottoman-German alliance, Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, seized the ships. Germany then sent two ships of its own as replacements. By October, the Ottomans were at war with the Allies.

Today’s crisis with Turkey over Russian weapons could be as consequential. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to import the S-400 antiaircraft system, designed to shoot down the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s airplanes, is a fundamental challenge to the West. Mr. Erdogan’s move to drill for natural gas in Cyprus’s waters has also driven a wedge between Turkey and its erstwhile allies, with the European Union now looking to cut funding to Turkey.

Ankara is likely to lose access to the coveted American-made F-35 aircraft which, like the British ships in 1914, have been paid for but not delivered. The Trump administration is also required by law to impose economic sanctions on Turkey in response to its Russian weapons purchase, though it can choose from options ranging in severity. The Turkish economy is already shrinking, with inflation at nearly 16% and unemployment at 14%. Even mild sanctions could spook investors and send the lira and stock market into free fall.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Graham Outlines the Abuse of Children Being ‘Rented’ to Help Migrants Claim Asylum: ‘This Is a Sick System’ Houston Keene

Posted By on July 15th, 2019

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained how migrant children are being “rented” to help other migrants claim asylum when attempting to cross into the U.S. over the southern border.

During an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” host Maria Bartiromo pressed Graham on the claim that migrants have been “renting” their children so that others can claim asylum in the U.S. and his claim that 30% of families apprehended while attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border are not really related.

Graham responded by saying that officials at the border have started a “pilot program” where they are testing the DNA of migrant family units at the border and that he was told of “about 60 children” who were being “recycled” at the border to allow more people to claim asylum.

“They told us about 60 children that were recycled,” said Graham. “They pick the child up in Central America, they bring them to the United States, everybody’s released, and the child goes back to Central America to do it again.”

The Senate Judiciary chairman continued on to call the system that has “exploited” children “sick” and “rotten to its core.” He also brought up that “100,000 unaccompanied minors” had been apprehended at the southern border “this year alone.”

Acting Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan told Republican senators last month that migrants were renting children to allow for easier passage into the U.S. through the southern border.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said that he could not “believe” that people were “renting babies” to enter the country.

“I can’t believe that this actually happens but that people down there in Central America or Mexico are renting babies to get across the border and then sending them back and renting them again to get across the border,” said Grassley.